 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel on ThinkTech, and this is ThinkTech Tech Talks. We're talking about tech. We're talking about David Watermull. We're talking about Cardax Inc. We're talking about the magical properties of Astaxanthin, which is a very special compound, I guess. Absolutely. David, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Great to be here. Good to see you again. Well, you know, you and I go back, oh gosh, to the early 2000s, I think. Indeed. You taught me a lot about the technology industry and the sector at the time. You and I rode through the whole 221 episode there and the development of so many companies. And you were running Hawaii Biotech for a while. Yes, indeed. And then that evolved into Cardax Inc. Yes. There's a pharmaceutical company right here in Hawaii. And now a public company, in fact. Indeed. Cardax is fabulous. So can you talk about Cardax? Tell us what it is, what its commitment is, and what its geography is. Well, Cardax is a Hawaii company, although we have operations. We have our manufacturing done in Europe. We've done work in China and in India, West Coast, East Coast, et cetera. Kind of a virtual global company, if you will. But many of our people are here in Hawaii. So Cardax, we've been dedicated to finding a way to commercialize a very interesting, intriguing compound called Azsazanthin. Yeah, Azsazanthin, what is that exactly? Azsazanthin is a compound that makes salmon pink and lobster red. We probably all know it as that. But most importantly, Azsazanthin is a safe, exceptionally safe, anti-inflammatory. We now know that inflammation plays a very significant role in all kinds of situations in disease applications, et cetera. And to find a safe anti-inflammatory has kind of been the holy grail of the pharmaceutical research for many years. Why? Why is inflammation important and why is an anti-inflammatory important? Inflammation, as it turns out now, is the driving underlying molecular force behind most chronic diseases and even probably aging itself. And so to find and to look for, which is what we've been doing and I think we have found, an anti-inflammatory that you can take. It's safe to take every day. Then you have something that I think makes a lot of sense for looking at improving your inflammatory health, as we call it. So what is inflammation and what is an anti-inflammatory on a molecular level, on a cellular level? So inflammation on a cellular level sets off pathways that can cause damage. Now some inflammation, in some cases, is good. It can help us heal and help us fight infections, but when it's run amok or when it is chronic, it can cause significant issues for our health. Why would it be run amok? It's a natural body defense, isn't it? Inflammation is a way for the body to deal with certain threats, physical threats and chemical threats. So what happens to make it run amok? And I guess to get even before the Axithantom discussion, what can I do or not do to avoid my body, my system having inflammation run amok? Well, inflammation is a natural process and for many of us actually having inflammation that's chronic, that's not in the best interest of our health, it's very common. In fact, most of us have issues like that. And so it actually, inflammation, as we age, is something that evolution didn't have to deal with. Because most of us, we didn't live that long. We didn't live that long. We got killed by our lion or maybe our neighbor, you know, in most cases. So we didn't have to deal with the issues of inflammation evolutionarily. But now we have that issue. And so if we can improve our inflammatory health, we can improve our overall health, our longevity and our freedom from some of the maladies that are out there today through looking at improving our inflammatory health. And inflammatory health covers a lot. It covers a lot of possible diseases and conditions and risks. I mean, maybe we even know all the risks involved in inflammation because inflammation we know is not good for you. And therefore we want to, now short of Axithantom, were there other ways people dealt with inflammation? Are there, you know, predecessors and anti-inflammatories? There are many anti-inflammatories on the market today. Some of the most common and well-understood are things like aspirin, Advil, Leve, even the more potent anti-inflammatories like prednisone, prednisolone, and the steroids, which have significant side effects. And even the three largest selling drugs in the world today, humia, embryo, and ramicade, that treat rheumatoid arthritis and other severe inflammatory disease are anti-inflammatories as well. So inflammation is well understood by many to play a major role in all of these situations. Now where does Axithantom come from? Is it a natural, organic thing? You have to make it, you have to build it in a laboratory. Where did it emerge from? How was it discovered? Well, Axithantom, as we know for a long time, makes salmon pink and has been used in the salmon feed manufacturing or salmon feed farming with chickens as well. And more recently there's been a way to make Axithantom from microalgae sources from microalgae. And what we found was that with Cardax is that we wanted to find a way to produce Axithantom at a large scale, much larger scale than is practical for the microalgae producers. Make it at higher degree of purity and improve on the absorption that is currently available. Very important thing compared to the microalgae Axithantom. But we think that the real advantage of what we've been working on is the safety compared to the traditional anti-inflammatories. The ones you mentioned a minute ago. So are there side effects to Axithantom? Axithantom has no known side effects. Maybe someday somebody will discover something, but there's a large body of evidence around the safety of Axithantom. There's 1,400 peer-reviewed papers, 52 human clinical trials, and Axithantom in several forms actually has a designation from the FDA called grass, generally recognized as safe. That's a very rigorous process. A lot of testing goes into that. And Axithantom has been able to achieve that both in its synthetic forms like what we're doing and the microalgae forms as well are able to achieve that grass status. Does anybody else doing this with Axithantom? Well, to our knowledge, no one else has brought to the market an Axithantom that's pure, that is made with great manufacturing rigor and with the superior absorption that we have today. Maybe someone will do it in the future, but as of right now we think we're the only ones. But there are obviously other anti-inflammatories, there are other Axithantom products on the market, all of which come from microalgae production processes. I know you've done a lot of research on this for years, but have you achieved patent protection of any aspect of it? So our company has 21 issued patents, including 14 in the US and 7 outside the US. Protecting what kind of aspect? So it protects things from the composition of matter for our second generation product, the actual structure of the molecule. And then also we're looking at uses of both our second generation and even our first generation product in certain areas as well. So we have a pretty extensive patent portfolio. I know people have said that it's hard to get patents if you're in Hawaii. No, it can be done. You file an application. You can send it from there. Yes, you can. Well, that's great. So you said there was a product before. This is the second generation. Can you talk about the transition from number one to number two? Well, the first thing that we were looking at was the microalgae. And we understood that. And one of my companies I was at previously, we did bring out one of the first microalgae Azazanthin products through the market. But as I've said before, we wanted to solve some of the commercial issues that were out there, large scale production, manufacturing, rigor, purity, and absorption. We think we've been able to do that with what we now call our first generation Azazanthin product, which has just come onto the market. But we do have a second generation product coming up probably in the next year or so that will be yet an improvement over this one. So this is the current product? Yes, that's the current product. Azazanthin. But there's going to be another one in a year that will be better. It will have some additional qualities that I think will be better for some of the people in the market. I think some people will still prefer this one over time, but there certainly will be some benefit to this. I think that one will be more concentrated and allow people to take a higher dose per capsule. And we think that for a lot of situations that's going to be the right solution. And you're finding, as we spoke before the show, that a higher dose is actually tolerable and, in other words, it has no effects. And it has a better positive effect. We've published over 50 papers and a number of those were animal studies. And what we found in those animal studies in most cases was that the higher doses give a better effect. The higher doses do not create any additional side effects or adverse events. So given that, the higher doses seem to be the path to choose. How do you measure the effects? Is there a way of a blood test or some sort of tissue analysis to determine the effect in terms of inflammation? So in animals and in humans, there are different ways of looking at that. One of the key ways is what we call a clinical assessment, which is if it has something to do with joints, you can say whether your joints feel better or not. There's some subjectivity to that. But nevertheless, if I or you feel better, you feel better. And so it's important. That's an important assessment. But there are laboratory tests that can be done. And you can measure inflammation in several different ways. One of the most common ways in the human population is something called CRP or C-reactive protein. And it's a marker of systemic inflammation. Now I've been demonstrated, I think, quite convincingly to be involved in cardiovascular disease. Now what you can look at, what you want to do is be able to measure the change in CRP. And there are laboratory studies that do that. But in addition to CRP, there are a number of other inflammatory markers or mediators that are not measured routinely, but can be measured. And they can be measured in a retail, I'm sorry, research setting that we and others have done, in fact, many times. And what we see with Azazanthin is an impact on virtually all of these inflammatory mediators and markers. Well, if you connect inflammation with heart disease, then one of these, well, this Azanthin in your successor drug will actually help on cardiovascular problems, no? Well, as a dietary supplement, so we are a... Treating as a dietary supplement. Treating as a dietary supplement, we don't actually mention a connection to a specific disease, but we think we can improve cardiovascular health in general with this type of approach, absolutely. Because inflammation, we know, plays a significant role in cardiovascular health. So it's a compound Azazanthin? And you can make it in laboratory. And we do. We took that approach. Well, we started in Hawaii. We have a large-scale major pharmaceutical type plant making it for us in Europe. In a facility that would probably cost us several hundred million dollars to reproduce. And so we're not quite at the point yet where we could do that in Hawaii. But a dream someday, perhaps, that could be done here. There's no reason it can't be other than the money capital and time and effort and the people to do it. So it could be done here. We don't have to worry about the shipping costs because we already ship all around the world. It's so small, right, exactly. We're going to take a short break. Okay. David Watermull, the CEO of Cardax Inc. I'm talking about Azazanthin. And the product here in the table, Zantacin, will be right back to discuss it further. And to see the implications for Hawaii in the pharmaceutical industry in Hawaii. And the supplement industry in Hawaii will be right back. Match Day is no ordinary day. The pitch. Hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your Match Day experience. If you drink, never drive. I'm with David. David Watermull. He's the CEO of Cardax. Wanted to get him on the shelves and stuff. Although you were on Think Tech before, way back when on the radio, I'm sure. Maybe more recently than that, huh? Yes, a little bit. But still several years ago. So glad to be back. Yeah, glad to have you. So David and Cardax have been working on this really interesting product. Xanthan's in right now and it's made with Asta Xanthan. And it affects inflammation, reduces systemic inflammation. And who knows what kind of other inflammation. And one of the things you were talking about during the break is it has an effect on aging. As a process in general for people in general. Tell us how that works, David. Well that was very interesting data that's come out of Hawaii. Since the late 60s, we've had a study ongoing in Hawaii at the Kukini Medical Center here called for shorthand, the Honolulu Heart Study. And they followed several thousand Japanese American men here. They knew what their medical records were, what they got sick from, if they passed away, what they died from. And they had tissue samples. And what they discovered in that group was that there was a particular gene called FOXO3. So you have the right version of this FOXO3 gene, the active version of it. You're three times more likely to live to be 100. Wow. And at first people thought well yeah that's just Japanese, that's the Okinawans or something that was just in that little group of people. No, it turns out to be a human wide gene since confirmed in over 20 studies. So very strongly supported. So the Japanese, the Okinawans have no particular advantage. And everybody would benefit by having this gene if they had it. Exactly. You want this activated version of it if you can have that. So that's some background. Now it turns out that Azazanthin tested in an animal model of aging. And we use particular types of animal models because most animals live too long. You can't wait three, four, five, ten years to see if there's no time for that. But we use either fruit flies or roundworms. And in this particular study, in the roundworm animal model, Azazanthin extended life by 30%. 30%. Oh. By 30%. And here's another really interesting part of this. They actually are able now with new genetic engineering techniques to silence or knock out the FOXO3 gene or the homologue, what we call the diversion of it in the roundworm, knocked it out. No effect. Azazanthin had no effect. So what we've done is to tie the Azazanthin impact on aging to FOXO3 in that model. Now in recent research, just recently came out with work done at the University of Hawaii with Brad Wilcox and Rich Alsop. At Japson. At Japson. We actually tested our second generation Azazanthin product on the ability in mice to see if maybe, and this was a real maybe to us, we could stimulate the activity and increase the activity of the FOXO3 gene. So in essence mimicking the best genetic lottery that some of us have won and most of us have not. And so we tested this in mice. And I thought maybe a 5% and 10% would be pretty interesting to see that we could improve it by that much. We saw an improvement of about 90%. What? 90%. 90% of the activated FOXO3. You activated 90% more than the control animals. Yeah. So what we have then with Azazanthin, something demonstrated already extension of life, but to have an actual impact on increasing the activation or activating the FOXO3 gene. So we think that's a major breakthrough in the understanding of aging. That's something that people can do today right now about aging. Yeah. So it's aging, it's FOXO3, it's inflammation. And with that, do you think that we could achieve the same 30% increase in life? Well, you know, it's going to be hard to prove that because we'll never do a study in people to see. But I think we're getting close to having something. If we can demonstrate that in people, which is probably our next step in humans, that we also increase FOXO3, then I think we'll really be onto something. This would be a world discovery, a global milestone in longevity. I think we have that opportunity to demonstrate it. But we have a lot of the pieces already in place here. And this essentially came out of Hawaii. That's fabulous. You always swore that you were going to keep your company in Hawaii. You always said that and I'm sure you've made compromises or sacrifices, if you will, over the years in order to stay here and you're still here and you're still talking about Hawaii as the center of this area. Well, think about what Hawaii, Hawaii is already branded as an anti-aging center. I mean, we have the healthy state. That's what people, wellness, et cetera. Now we have some very intriguing real science that I think could allow Hawaii to position itself as an anti-aging center of excellence. And that means more than just the anti-inflammatories. It means it's an expansion of the notion of Hawaii's focus on success in wellness and anti-aging. It's taking that brand that we spent so much time to build and rightly so and adding some real science to it and putting together a package of things that can really connect aging inflammation together. The FOXO3 gene, by the way, is a cardiovascular anti-inflammatory, maybe not surprising. And you could put these together with also something else we're working on, an inflammatory panel to look at measuring inflammation. Like you get a lipid panel today that measures LDL or HDL or triglycerides. We need something that's commercially economical, that is easy to use for physicians that doesn't exist today. You can do these tests one off today, but not as a panel easily and economically. So we're working on that as well. What do you mean a panel? What is a panel? A panel is like let's test 10 or 12 things. A panel of lipids is 3, 4, 5 things. And the same concept here. We would combine them, do a test for all of these. And then you could measure the impact of a lot of anti-inflammatory, anti-stress. See how they work. And see how they work. It should be easy though, right? We have the good population to test right here. We understand it right here. You understand it. Japsum understands it. Wilcox understands it. So the result is you could make a test that would demonstrate what I think we both believe is the truth. Namely that this will give you greater longevity. And be able to measure in real time. Take an assessment. You come into my office if I'm the physician. We're going to do an inflammatory status for you. And we can see what your inflammatory mediators and markers are and treat with Xanthocin. But also look at things like yoga and lomi lomi and hula and exercise and diet to really look at impacting these inflammatory anti-aging activities. Combination of vectors. And you know, think about medical tourism. Sure. You know, people come here. It's inherent to everything you've said. Yes. Coming here to do that. Local population as well. Of course it's for people in Hawaii, but it's for people to come here as well to do this. It's kind of like Cleveland Clinic kind of carved out a cardiovascular space. MD Anderson did a cancer. Nobody's done an anti-aging space. And we have this research and product, this is all done here. It's a logical place for us that actually will take what we've already spent so much time in there for branding in Hawaii. To actually leverage that into kind of a new Hawaii statewide business. Yes. Absolutely. How do you take the test? Is it a blood test? Yeah. A swab? Well, clearly a blood test would work. But there's some new advances in the swab technology that may make a lot of this actually just a saliva test. I can see it now. Like ancestry.com. You send in a swab. So it's inflammation.com. And you send in a swab and you find out what your reading is and you find out how well you're doing. So we only have a minute left. But tell me where I can get Xantas in this bottle, which I guess it's available in GNC and other stores. Yeah. So it's exclusively a GNC. We're very proud to be working with them. They've taken a very proactive scientific approach to the way that they are looking at the products that they offer. And Xanthusin fits right into that. So we're working with their Hawaii office, Hawaii stores here I should say. There's more than, there's 29 in Hawaii. Wow. I didn't know there were that many. It's very popular, really. It's very popular. All this whole thing about wellness is very popular. Indeed. And then moving on from Hawaii to the mainland. Sure. Yeah. So, by the way, these are pills. These are the Xanthusin pills. We got them right here. And you could take one or two. You could take more. It would be okay to take, what, people are taking four and they find that works fine or even better. Yeah. So we're finding that there's a range of dosages depending on the individual situation. Some people are fine with one capsule a day. Others find that more is better as well. And that's certainly consistent with the data that we and others have published also. So how many are just going to handle on the price? This is not expensive. We have two bottles. This one is a 30 count. It's $23.99 at GNC. We also have a 60 count. That's $39.99. So that's not expensive. This is all within the budget of the ordinary person. So let me ask you, what's going to happen going forward, David? Certainly, this is not the end of the game for Cardex. You've got a lot more on your plan. To the extent you can tell us about it, what are you planning for the future? Well, we have certainly talked about an expansion of Xantacin outside Hawaii. And we have a potential global market. And so that is going to play out hopefully over the next several years of time. We have a second generation product coming that's even an improvement, a more concentrated version of that. And so that will come behind that. And then we also have in our pipeline, assuming that we can find the resources to develop them, similar products, but with impact on prostate inflammation, prostate health, and in eye health, macular health as well. So we have those products coming also. Wow, that's going to be exciting. I hope you'll tell me. Because we all get older, we need to avoid inflammation to stay healthy in many ways and to stay alive for that matter. Absolutely, no. This has a great effect. To the extent that you can get onto the mainland, get to Europe, get to Asia, sell Xantacin in one generation or other of these drugs, these pills, then you will change the way people see Hawaii. You will expand the whole wellness reputation that we have. And you will be a Hawaii company as you always wanted to be. Well, I've always wanted to stay in Hawaii and there's no reason that we can't stay in Hawaii. And I think the concept that anything good has to move away, hopefully we will disprove that. Because as we've shown, you don't have to move. But you can still be a global company. So it's a model. And maybe the dream of the early 2000s that you and I had together and so many other people that Hawaii becomes a tech center, even a pharmaceutical center, can come true. And you need leading companies like Cardax to continue and keep on trucking and expanding and reaching additional markets. And as a result, people see Hawaii and the light we want them to see Hawaii. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Yeah, you were there. We talked about this. Now it's happening. Thank you so much, David. Delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. See you with Cardax. Thanks so much. Yeah.