Easton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (EAPH)

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EAPH: VIORRA-Hyaluronic Acid, Basic Active Ingredient History:



Just put the formula on the left in the kind of lipstick bottle on the right.
Case solved. Easy, Next...
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It starts with a chicken, not an egg.

The red combs of roosters and hens turn out to be some of the best sources for the sugar molecule hyaluronan, a compound that some doctors are calling the next big thing after Botox.

It is already used to protect the eye during surgery, reduce inflammation in arthritic knees and prevent postsurgery scar tissue. Most recently, hyaluronan has become known as the latest treatment for plumping up facial wrinkles.

Hyaluronan, formerly known as hyaluronic acid, may have many more applications, researchers and doctors hope, as they search for ways to harness its potential to manipulate cells.

Hyaluronan was discovered in 1934 by Karl Meyer in an ophthalmology lab at Columbia University. Meyer found the substance in cows' eyes and determined that it helped the eye retain its shape. The substance was very viscous, leading Meyer to suspect that it might have some therapeutic use.

But extracting cows' eyeballs was neither appetizing nor feasible commercially. Along came Dr. Endre Balazs, a Hungarian scientist who also ended up at Columbia. Using Meyer's procedures, Dr. Balazs figured out in the early 1940's how to extract and purify hyaluronan from rooster combs.

The combs were already known ''as one of the world's richest sources of hyaluronan,'' said Dr. Vincent Hascall, a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation who has studied the molecule. And the combs are plentiful, Dr. Hascall noted, because they are usually thrown away after slaughter.

In roosters, the comb, essentially a big flap of skin, swells with hyaluronan in response to testosterone, Dr. Hascall said. Hens have hyaluronan in their combs, too, but not as much.

In humans and other mammals, the compound is primarily found in connective tissue, in the eyes, the umbilical cord and in joint fluid, where it acts like a cushion.