ME BIOSCIENCES INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: J201-CSO1

Description

The military has achieved monumental successes with regard to saving lives on the battlefield and fixing the physically injured. However, the human body is more than just a physical machine; it needs careful attending to, and not just when it’s broken. Although the warfighter is incredibly resilient, the demands of military service are often such that the threshold of what the body can withstand while still maintaining optimal health and performance are exceeded. The demands of military service place a significant amount of stress on the body, including physical, nutritional, environmental, chemical, and psychological stressors, to name a few. There are a variety of ways to mitigate the impact stressors have on the body (e.g. behavioral changes, meditation, yoga, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, etc.), but one of the most effective is nutritional support. In fact, only 25% of the variation in illness, wellness, and human longevity is due to genetic factors, while 75% can be attributed to external factors such as nutrition. Every person has unique needs when it comes to nutrition, and unfortunately, personalized nutrition is not prioritized within military settings due to the difficulties of scaling. Although there is a demand to increase the resilience and longevity of the warfighter, the most obvious solution for achieving this – nutrition – is currently underutilized. Thus, the undernourished operator could be thrust on a trajectory towards suboptimal physical and mental health, performance deficits, poor recovery following injury, and even chronic disease and disability.  Our team aims to address the current gaps in nutritional support for the warfighter by providing an effective, simple solution that enables them to maintain optimal health in any environment. In order to accomplish our team’s goal, we will provide just-in-time delivery of precision nutrition solutions via a patented single serve “shaker bag” that can be prefilled with a variety of approved, clean ingredients custom designed to have a specific nutritional impact and benefit. These include formulations focused on supplementing an individual’s diet with missing or deficient nutrients, providing energy support just prior to activity for enhanced performance, delivering critical nutrients post-activity for optimal recovery, supplementing an individual’s diet for resiliency in an operational setting, promoting optimal sleep, and restoring health following setbacks. The end-user need only add water or other liquid, shake the bag (internal shaker ball designed to create a homogenous solution), drink the contents of the bag, then discard or recycle the entire system. In order to assess efficacy of our product, we have developed a mobile application for tracking the compliance of consumption, user experience, and perceived user benefits.