50 Best Companies to Watch 2020
The Silicon Review
What if a single technology could simultaneously address a multitude of key drug and nutraceutical product efficacy challenges, such as low bioavailability, high absorption variability and poor dosage control? Mountain Valley MD (MVMD) believes its patented and proprietary Quicksome™ technology is one such technology, set to revolutionize new product possibilities that were previously unimaginable.
Founded in 2018, Mountain Valley MD was established with the vision to create a world-class health and wellness organization. They raised over $10 million in private capital prior to going public on both the Canadian Securities Exchange and Frankfurt Exchange in March this year. With a mission of “Helping people live their best life” at the heart of their corporate strategy and culture, the Mountain Valley team identifies and pursues opportunities to revolutionize health and wellness outcomes.
This pursuit led to the company acquiring the Quicksome™ patent portfolio, a unique desiccation technology utilizing advanced liposomes and other stabilizing molecules to encapsulate and formulate active ingredients into highly efficacious product formats. The result is a new generation of product formulations that overcome the limitations of standard liposomal formulas, vastly improving the therapeutic index of a drug.
Novel liposome product designs are gaining traction because they can manipulate the solubility of small organic molecules. This is important because many of today’s new drug ingredients have serious solubility challenges, limiting their use. Small spherical vesicles made out of non-toxic cholesterols and phospholipids, liposomes help overcome these challenges, enabling the molecules to be better solubilized and enter the body. The technology works by delivering high loading multilamellar liposomes capable of carrying lipophilic and hydrophilic molecules simultaneously, providing fast and enhanced uptake of 100% of the active ingredients within a formula. And while liposomal technology itself is not a new technology, Mountain Valley MD’s desiccated liposome technology represents an advance in the state of the art, encapsulating ingredients more effectively, and delivering molecules into the body faster, with greater impact, efficiency and accuracy.
In conversation with Dennis Hancock, President and CEO of Mountain Valley MD
Q. How does your mission statement of “Helping people live their best life” reconcile with what you are doing as a company?
We have acquired and developed key assets centred around the implementation of our patented Quicksome™ oral delivery technologies that are focused on the creation of next-generation health and wellness consumer products. Whether people need more energy to get on with their day, a better night’s sleep, pain relief or help with anxiety, weight loss or libido, we have a broad spectrum of formulations that truly are focused on helping people maximize each day and live their best life.
Our technologies enable nutraceutical and pharmaceutical product formulations with rapid onset, high bioavailability, and precision dosing for health and wellness applications through rapid dissolve strips that are placed under the tongue, similar to a breath strip that consumers are familiar with. We also have a rapid dissolve powder that is poured into the mouth from a stick pack for larger formulation loads and a convenient quick-release chew format.
Q. So your product is not swallowed the same as other existing oral products in the market?
No, our desiccated liposome technology primarily delivers the actives through transmucosal delivery directly in the mouth versus being digested. It is well documented that many of the active ingredients contained in traditional pharmaceutical drugs and nutraceutical supplements are not well absorbed and suffer extensive degradation during first pass metabolism. This is exactly the problem that Mountain Valley MD’s direct-to-mouth Quicksome™ technology solves, dramatically improving bioavailability of compounds that are traditionally heavily metabolized by MAO enzymes, glucuronidation and other conjugation processes.
Q. So how does your Quicksome™ technology change what is possible with liposomes?
By using a unique 2-level encapsulation and desiccation system, MVMD’s Quicksome™ technology transcends traditional liposomal formulation methods. This innovation changes the game on what’s possible with liposomal formulations. To give your readers a little background, a liposome is a tiny bubble made out of the same material as a cell membrane. Due to this specialized structure we know that liposomes easily fuse into the cell walls of our human cells. When the liposomes fuse with the cells, their contents empty into the cell and deliver the desired contents. Liposomes can be filled with active ingredients that can accomplish efficiencies of bioavailability far beyond some typical tablets, capsules and powders.
But it is important to note that while liposomal technology has been employed as a vehicle for penetrating the dermis and administering nutrients and pharmaceutical ingredients for well over two decades the technology has faced several important hurdles limiting widespread adoption of their use. Historically this technology has fallen short of its potential due to being relatively expensive, complicated to manufacture, having reduced stability, and limited shelf life. Quicksome’s proprietary 2-level encapsulation and desiccation method overcomes these hurdles, enabling a new generation of product possibilities.
Q. I saw on your website that Mountain Valley MD has a robust cannabis vertical. How does that fit in with your health and wellness pursuits?
Our original company roots actually started in the medical cannabis space based on the overwhelming evidence we were seeing about the positive health benefits. We believe that our health and wellness success will be bolstered further through intelligent applications of cannabis-based cannabinoids across our product line. We are active in the areas of cultivation, research and development, and manufacturing across a portfolio of sustainable cannabis assets.
Q. Is there anything that you are doing specifically in the cannabis space that differentiates you from competitors?
We are doing really innovative things in the cannabis space. First of all, our cultivation and cannabis licenses are based in Colombia where we see optimal growth conditions and incredibly low cost structure. This is a critical part of our formula where we can produce highest quality product at one of the lowest costs bases in the world. Colombia is very progressive in the cannabis space politically and has extensive export channels for medical cannabis products globally.
We have also recently acquired the exclusive global distribution rights for CannaBloom, which is a certified organic cannabis and hemp plant stimulant technology. Our preliminary internal testing at our Colombian facility and through key partners in the United States and Canada demonstrated very cost-effective yield increases on crops consistently of 20% and in certain cases by as much as 40%. Essentially the product once applied stimulates the plants to grow deeper roots and open up their foliage to optimize the photosynthesis. We will distribute this across the industry and anticipate near-term revenues across that product line.
Q. You have a lot of exciting developments in your business. What are you most excited about in Mountain Valley MD’s future?
Well we have an amazingly talented team that is working on solving some very advanced challenges in the health and wellness space. To date we have done research and development work with more than 60 molecules for a variety of nutraceutical and pharmaceutical applications, including drugs, vaccines, the emerging mushroom space and cannabinoids. For me personally, the idea that our delivery technology could help dispense drugs such as insulin or deliver vaccines into the body through a rapid dissolve sublingual strip and eliminate the need for painful needle injections is truly game changing and very inspiring.
Meet the leader behind the success of Mountain Valley MD
Dennis Hancock is the CEO and President of Mountain Valley MD. He is a senior sales and marketing executive with over 25 years of experience spanning automotive, tech, telco, retail, and financial services sectors. Dennis spent more than 12 years in a leadership role at one of North America’s leading performance improvement and Loyalty providers, Maritz, who works with 70% of the world’s Super 50 companies. Dennis led publicly-traded ZENN Motor Company as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing. As a senior officer at ZMC, Dennis drove the establishment of ZENN – (Zero Emission, No Noise) as one of the most recognized “green tech” brands in North America. Dennis has several startups established, including PerformanceSPARK, an agency that works with leading organizations to identify and deliver on the key elements necessary to drive measurable performance growth, and co-founder of CrowdSeating Inc., an innovative social concert platform that provides fans with a conduit to crowdfund their favorite artist for a unique concert experience.