By Paula Burkes
Copyright 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
Annual sales for 2-year-old Oklahoma City-based Ultra Botanica dietary supplement manufacturer are on track to hit $1 million this year, CEO Adam Payne said.
Every month, he said, thousands of customers — via Amazon.com, ultrabotanica.com, international distributors or through their doctors’ offices — are buying $29.50 or $56.50 bottles of “UltraCur” branded capsules that contain a highly absorbent form of curcumin, an ingredient in the Asian plant Tumeric that’s been shown not only to relieve inflammatory aches and pains, but also to lower the incidence of Alzheimer’s and prostate and pancreatic cancers.
“Doctors are starting to understand how the material works,” Payne recently said from his office at 120 NE 26, where the product is made and he employs nine others.
“It’s not just nutritional support, but — like clowns in a rodeo — curcumin helps balance out the negative aspects of the immune system in a positive way,” he said.
The company recently introduced a new product to help relieve arthritis in older dogs.
By all accounts, 52-year-old Payne — who speaks fluent Russian and holds a master’s degree in business administration — is on top of his game in the biotech industry.
But that hasn’t always been the case. A former leading management and marketing consultant in Russia, veteran entrepreneur and half the former Alpha-Bio Partners that helped start up several Oklahoma City biotech companies in the 2000s, Payne in 2008 stepped down from Altheus Therapeutics, a company that he co-founded and venture-funded and that manufactured a drug to treat inflammatory bowel disease.
The drug ultimately failed in 2014, in Phase 2 of clinical trials. It was proved to work in animals, but not in humans.