Novel Ingredient Developer Introduces 4 New Ingredients

Every few years, a new company comes around and turns the dietary supplement industry on its head. Sometimes it’s a brand like GHOST (2016), a novel ingredient developer like NNB Nutrition (2019), or an athlete partnership like Chris Bumstead at Raw Nutrition (2021).

PricePlow was on the ground floor covering the above three, and we’re confident to say that we’ve found the next major industry innovator:

Aura Scientific

Aura Scientific is a new American ingredient development company launched in May of 2024, with a tagline of Innovation You Can Feel. They’re starting with four incredibly exciting, experiential ingredients tailored towards the sports nutrition market:

• NeuroRush

  For stimulant-free energy, vigilance, and vitality.

  NeuroRush is a natural coffee fruit extract from coffea arabica that’s standardized to high amounts of chlorogenic acids, which can support improved mood, vitality, and overall cognitive function — especially when paired in an energy drink or pre-workout supplement.

• EndoFlo

  For improved blood flow and pumps.

  EndoFlo is a unique combination extract of mangifera indica (mango fruit), kaempferia parvifloria (black ginger root), ginkgo biloba, and pine bark extract, four promising agents to deliver pumps in a whole new way.

  If you thought ginkgo biloba was just a memory-enhancing ingredient, guess again! We’ll cover some of this below.

• CapsiBurn

  For thermogenesis, fat mobilization, and appetite control.

  You’ve heard of capsicum — red peppers standardized for their potent thermogenic capsaicinoids. But have you ever heard of CLA-coated capsaicinoids?!

  That’s what CapsiBurn brings — so not only do you get a pinch of CLA, but you get a spice ingredient that’s far easier on both manufacturing equipment… and your GI tract.

• ProtoTest

  For hormone production, sexual function, and libido.

  We’ve seen tribulus terrestris come and go and come back around again, with great data on libido but not as much on hormone production. Aura may have figured it out — with a key constituent found in some tribulus species, only extracted from a better plant source.

  This is the part of tribulus that we want, and you can try the incredible feel-good ingredient using ProtoTest.

ProtoTest is a dioscorea nipponica root extract that’s standardized for protodioscin, which can boost DHEA levels, indirectly supporting testosterone and DHT production.

The above four points are the quick breakdown – more information will be linked in the future. We’re excited to see new (and better) spins on ingredients that have long needed a bit of modernization, and this is only the beginning.

Below we talk about the Aura Scientific advantage, then dive into a select bit of science on each ingredient. There’s far more to come, so get signed up for our Aura Scientific news alerts below and let’s get into it.

The Aura Scientific Advantage

Aura Scientific consists of an American team, with supplement industry veterans who have worked on every end of the industry spectrum, from branding to manufacturing to R&D to fulfillment.

This means that they’ve seen and felt the pain of working with other ingredient suppliers, and are making the process of doing business as easy as possible:

• Fast order processing, with all of the right paperwork inside (see next point).
• Compliant paperwork, with accurate and precise COAs that won’t add to manufacturing lead times.
• Samples available – both in powders and easily-taken capsules, for all qualified partners.
• Lower prices – branded ingredients don’t need to ruin your budget
• Effective business practices – The days of waiting 10 days to get an NDA signed during international holidays are over – Aura is fast on their feet.

End-users will understand the pricing, but the other points are what actually keep projects moving:

A better way of doing business-to-business

Ingredient suppliers should be easy and friendly to work with – especially when they have trademarked ingredients. Oddly enough, this isn’t always the case, but Aura promises to buck the trend with win-win dealings.

Novel ingredients shouldn’t be budget-breakers, either. Coffee fruit extract, as awesome as it is, should still leave room for more innovation in your formula. An auxiliary pump ingredient like EndoFlo should fit well next to citrulline or nitrates, not push your pre-workout to a $59 price tag!

Behind the scenes, we feel the pain and hear the complaints, and will be pushing Aura to maintain this position and follow through with it.

Moving towards research and more IP

Aura is also investing in research and IP protection, so that the brands using their innovations can make accurate claims and have their investments protected.

We aren’t sure what will be studied first — here at PricePlow we’re most interested in clinical research on ProtoTest and EndoFlo — but we’ll see what Aura moves towards first.

The Aura Ingredients

Full write-ups are coming for each ingredient throughout 2024, but here are some teasers of what we’ve enjoyed when researching each ingredient:

• NeuroRush

  

  Besides the most excellent name, NeuroRush has a solid 50% or greater standardization of chlorogenic acids and contains key constituent 5-caffeoylquinic acid. It’s meant to be dosed at a minimum of 100 milligrams at a time, but in our testing, 200 milligrams has been a bit more lively.

  Coffee fruit extracts have been marketed for many things, oftentimes for their cognitive benefits, but one thing that we always love about chlorogenic acids is how they make us feel.

  It turns out we weren’t crazy — when initially researching NeuroRush, we found a 2019 study mentioning “mental energizing effects” right there in the abstract.^[1] “Vitality” is sometimes a word we like to use with this ingredient.

  

  Quick Review: It smells great, and 100 milligrams charges things up… but 200 milligrams is actually intense!

  Beyond that, there are two other studies demonstrating acute cognitive and mood effects when ingesting beverages with pure or supplemental chlorogenic acids.^[2,3]

  Unsurprisingly, “significant self-reported mood effects were found” for a study group that added a low dose of caffeine — just 75 milligrams.^[1] NeuroRush can work well in both caffeine and caffeine-free applications, in energy drinks, pre-workout supplements, fat burners, and nootropics.

  There’s also some great safety research on whole coffee fruit products^[4] — this is a class of ingredients we’ve grown to love and trust, even for conservative users.

  Subscribe to PricePlow’s Newsletter and NeuroRush Alerts

EndoFlo

This pump support supplement ingredient is quite a unique one, with four specific botanical extracts to support vasodilation and blood flow. Let’s quickly give a few snippets on each one:

• Mangifera Indica

  

  Just one capsule brings some solid stimulant-free bolt-on pump effects

  Seeing mango fruit extract is always great news. It’s not just one of our favorite flavors — its constituent mangiferin is growing in popularity due to its wide array of benefits. In terms of pumps, we’re excited to see that it may function as a PDE5 inhibitor,^[5] which is good news for those looking for blood flow.

  Interestingly, there are other mango extracts in the skin care world that have been shown to improve blood flow to the skin!^[6,7]

• Kaempferia parviflora (black ginger)

  Black ginger is probably the most interesting constituent inside — we’re starting to find a lot of reasons to consider it in numerous applications, ranging from anti-inflammatory to anti-obesity to muscular endurance and strength applications.

  For instance, a human study on black ginger showed increased grip strength, leg strength, faster sprint times, and better hip and upper body flexibility.^[8]

  Numerous preclinical studies have also demonstrated:

  • Vasodilation mechanisms,^[9-12]
  • Improved muscle endurance (via AMPK activation),^[13,14]

  5,7-dimethoxyflavone (DMF)

  

  For now, let’s file this Kaempferia Parviflora Extract (KPE) rodent study under the “interesting” category, where it “markedly increased the muscle fiber size, muscle volume, and muscle mass, resulting in the enhancement of muscle function, such as exercise endurance and grip strength”.^[15]

  But what’s really interesting is some of the research on one of its bioactive flavonoids, 5,7-dimethoxyflavone (DMF), which has even more vasorelaxation / cardioprotection / PDE5 inhibition support in animal studies.^[16-18]

  There are also two animal studies on DMF with respect to muscle growth and strength!^[15,19]

  We’re only scratching the surface here – we’re extremely bullish on black ginger.

• Ginkgo Biloba Extract

  Ginkgo biloba isn’t just a nootropic memory enhancer — it can support vasodilation — and a lot of those cognitive effects are from none other than increased blood flow anyway!^[20,21]

  Ginkgo is often extracted for its terpine lactones — these are bioactive constituents that have cardioprotective properties to consider.^[22]

  Some ginkgo extracts have been shown to inhibit PDE4 levels, and PDE5 to a lesser extent.^[23]

  Overall, if ginkgo can be made to taste good enough for pre-workout formulas, it’s worth looking at its support for blood flow.

• Pinus massoniana (pine bark extract)

  Pine bark extract is the least surprising part of EndoFlo – we’ve long seen it used in pre-workout supplements for purposes of pump. Its proanthocyanidins are used to reduce vessel constriction^[24] — some tannins inside are compounds like catechin and epicatechin.^[24,25]

No doubt, we’re excited about EndoFlo. It likely won’t be the primary pump driver in your pre-workout — nobody’s kicking out your citrulline or nitrates anytime soon — but it can certainly support them through completely alternative pathways!

Subscribe to PricePlow’s Newsletter and EndoFlo Alerts

• CapsiBurn

  

  If you’ve ever formulated a fat burner or researched weight loss supplements, you’ve undoubtedly seen red peppers like capsicum, standardized for capsaicinoids.

  For good reason, too: there are numerous meta-analyses supporting reduction in BMI, body weight, and waist circumference,^[26] decreased caloric intake,^[26,27] and increased resting metabolic rate / energy expenditure with improved fat oxidation,^[28] especially in those with larger BMI^[29] — and all without an effect on blood pressure!^[30]

  With that many meta-analyses covering even more clinical trials within them, pepper extracts are an obvious choice when formulating any thermogenic supplement.

  So what’s the difference between Aura Scientific’s CapsiBurn?

  Two things:

  

  A meta-analysis showed that capsaicinoids significantly improve resting metabolic rate .^[28]

  1. It utilizes both cayenne pepper fruit extract and tabasco pepper fruit extract.

     Scientifically known as Capsicum frutescens, tabasco peppers bring some highly potent capsaicinoids like dihydrocapsaicin.^[31]

  2. It’s encapsulated in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a well-known fat that’s often used in weight loss trials as well.

     We’re not really here for the benefits of the CLA, though — there’s not enough of that in a 50 milligram CapsiBurn dose to do much metabolically. Instead, we’re excited because the CLA encapsulates the capsaicinoids, providing for a better experience both in the user’s digestive system and in the manufacturer’s machinery!

     While many other companies encapsulate their other ingredients in soy-derived phospholipids, we love the clever use of vegan CLA, which makes for a win-win.

  We’re in the process of testing how well CapsiBurn holds up in water – this is something where other capsaicin-based red pepper extracts have struggled.

  Subscribe to PricePlow’s Newsletter and CapsiBurn Alerts

• ProtoTest

  As discussed in the introduction, ProtoTest is a dioscorea nipponica root extract standardized for protodioscin. This incredibly promising constituent that’s also sometimes found in Tribulus can boost DHEA levels,^[32-34] indirectly supporting testosterone and DHT production.^[34-36]

  

  By getting protodioscin from dioscorea nipponica, Aura Scientific has worked around the identification and inconsistency issues that have long plagued various Tribulus species.

  Replacing two extracts of old

  There are two ingredients that used to dominate the testosterone-boosting scene, but seem to have disappeared from the market: Libilov and Tribestan. These both included protodioscin (at least 45% in Tribestan), and have some old yet potentially-useful research behind them. Their websites are no longer live, but you can find their homepages and research pages on their archived pages.^[37-40]

  Based upon some of the research, it seems that these extracts could indeed significantly boost testosterone levels^[41] and sexual output.^[32]

  A primate study using a high-protodioscin extract also increased serum testosterone,^[42] as did an older study cited in the evaluation of a rat model.^[43]

  Looking for more research

  Protodioscin is quite promising, especially in its effects on DHEA. There’s a good chance that this was the driving force behind the success of some tribulus extracts that showed efficacy, and it may be the missing link for those who don’t.

  

  This is the study using protodioscin^[41] that we’ll want to get replicated at some point, using ProtoTest

  With that said, we’ll definitely need more data before any major corporate-style brand jumps on this one — it’ll be best suited to smaller, nimble brands who want something novel and aggressive.

  We repeatedly se “old become new” (recall the return of turkesterone in 2022), and maybe it’s time for tribulus to make an appropriately-marketed comeback — only, using dioscorea nipponica to skirt around tribulus’ inconsistency could be the real key to success.

  We’re hoping Aura Scientific will fund some research on ProtoTest, because everything we’ve seen on protodioscin so far is older, and we want to see the effects using modern analytical techniques in an open-text journal. We’re definitely due for a new feel-good ingredient that actually increases hormone levels.

  Subscribe to PricePlow’s Newsletter and ProtoTest Alerts

Testing a coupon code for an ingredient supplier!

We’ve joked in the past that we don’t have coupon codes with raw materials suppliers, but why not? In order to track this post, which is sponsored by Aura Scientific, brands and manufacturers alike can ask for a PRICEPLOW discount.

In exchange for supporting this partnership, we can even offer some consulting services for your formulation and label compliance efforts.

We’re also looking forward to testing, tasting, and covering the science of new products leveraging these ingredients, so make sure you contact us when getting ready to launch one, and we can try to link it into our Aura content pages.

Aura Scientific is On the Rise

PricePlow originated in the sports and active nutrition niche of the supplement industry, and even though we’re venturing into other areas, this is still our bread-and-butter.

So you can see how we’re extremely excited to see a new company enter and do things the right way, fixing up some older ingredients that have traditionally had some issues — whether they were science-based, sourcing-related, lacking novelty, or simply had outlandish pricing.

Aura Scientific is launching with just 4 ingredients, but this is quite literally just the beginning. We’re confident they’ll have more innovation and research to publish as time progresses.