The Howard Foundation

In March 2023, the patents and trade marks relating to macular carotenoids held by the Howard Foundation Group, alongside associated intellectual property arising from research sponsored over the last 15 years, were assigned to Maravilla LLC, a US company formed by the two main business partners Industrial Organica (IOSA) and Macuhealth.

Jon Howard, director of Howard Foundation Holdings, reflected on the significance of the patents: “The first set of patents resulted from research into the prevention of Age-related Macular Degeneration. The latest patents cover how macular carotenoids help to improve visual performance and, when combined with fish oil, also slow the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease.“

Julie Lambert, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Howard Foundation commented: “In a lifetime of research, my father, the late Dr. Alan Howard, had the vision to create patents to protect the quality and use of the products that came from that research. Through the Howard Foundation, this culminated in a series of patents and trademarks developed for use in eye and brain health. We are pleased to pass these patents on to our long-term business partners.“

The Foundation continues to support research and conferences in the field of macular carotenoids.

For further information see the Maravilla website.

In May 2021, the Nutrition Research Centre Ireland (NRCI) announced the creation of a certification process for nutritional supplements containing carotenoids based in the Howard Laboratory at the NRCI and run by a new company Supplement Certified. The involvement of the late Dr Alan Howard in the initiation of the work that led to the creation of Supplement Certified is described here.

In January 2023, Tom Hennessy was appointed CEO of the company which remains based in the Howard Laboratory at the NRCI which is now part of SETU, the South East Technological University in Ireland.  

A Waterford native, Tom has spent the last 30 years living and working in the United States where he owned and managed a number of businesses predominantly in the health care sector. Click here to read more about Tom.

The Howard Foundation is pleased that Professor John Nolan, the Howard Chair in Human Nutrition at SETU, together with Dr Alfonso Prado-Cabrero, have led the creation of an independent process that will help to guarantee the quality of carotenoid-containing nutritional supplements sold to the public. Their laboratory in the process of gaining ISO certification (ISO/IEC 17025:2017)

The Howard Foundation acknowledges the hard work and dedication of Dr Steve Kreitzman and Mrs Valerie Beeson in their roles as directors of Howard Foundation Research (HFR), supporting and training staff to deliver a programme of weight loss through doctors and pharmacies, thus enabling the success of Lipotrim for over 22 years.

Sadly, the company has had to close the business following the retirement of the directors and due to both supply challenges and the difficulty of finding investors to re-launch the business after the pandemic.

Click here to read more about the Lipotrim programme

On Monday 28th November, Professor Mark Emberton gave the Howard Foundation 40th anniversary lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine.

Professor Emberton presented the story of how the diagnosis of prostate cancer has been transformed by the introduction of MRI scanning. This was only approved in 2019 and came as a result of two clinical trials led by Professor Emberton. Click here for a further overview of the lecture.

Click on the image below to watch the lecture via the RSM YouTube channel

For three nights, from 26 to 28 October, the Howard Theatre hosted its first opera since the theatre opened in 2010. The opera was Handel’s Semele, performed by the Cambridge University Opera Society together with the Downing College Music Society.

Dr Alan Howard and his son Jon created the Howard Foundation on 24th October 1982. To commemorate the 40th anniversary, the Foundation is sponsoring a lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine on 28th November 2022. This event is free and available to all.

The title of the lecture is Seeing is believing – the transformation of prostate cancer management over the last decade and it will be given by Mark Emberton who is a Professor of Interventional Oncology within the Division of Surgery and Dean of the Faculty of Medical Science at University College London. He is clinically active and holds the position of Honorary Consultant Urologist at University College London Hospitals NHS Trust where he works as a specialist in prostate cancer. 

He is joined by Dr Matthew Hobbs, Director of Research, Prostate Cancer UK, for a discussion following the lecture, chaired by Professor Roger Kirby, President of the RSM and himself a prostate surgeon with over 40 years’ experience in the NHS and private practice.

You may either attend in person or watch online. For further information and to register, please click to visit the RSM website. After the event, the lecture will be available on YouTube.

The evening opens at 6pm with the lecture starting at 6.30 and the discussion ending at 7.30 to allow time for a drinks reception to network, relax and enjoy a refreshing drink in the RSM’s iconic glass atrium.

Dr Alan Howard and Professor John Nolan began working together in 2009, initially looking into the benefits to visual health from nutritional supplements containing the three carotenoids, Lutein, Zeaxanthin and Meso-Zeaxanthin. This led to the Howard Foundation supporting a number of clinical trials and associated research at the Nutrition Research Centre Ireland (NRCI) at which Professor Nolan is the Principal Investigator. The full list of papers resulting from the research supported by the Foundation is given on the Publications page.

By 2014 the research had moved on to looking at brain as well as visual health. The first paper from the Carotenoids and Age-Related Dementia Study (CARDS-1) was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. This showed that patients with Alzheimer’s disease are deficient in carotenoids and have poorer vision when compared to age-matched controls. In 2018, results from the Central Retinal Enrichment Supplementation Trials (CREST) showed, for the first time, that supplementation with the 3 carotenoids in the healthy population improves cognitive function by improving memory.

Further research by Professor Nolan and his team led to the inclusion of omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil) with the 3 carotenoids into new studies supported by the Howard Foundation. CARDS-3 was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2018 and indicated that combining the carotenoids with omega-3 fatty acids is beneficial for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. This led to the setting up of a major new trial named Re-MIND (Memory Investigation with Nutrition for Dementia). Patients with mild-moderate Alzheimer’s disease consumed a daily supplement for 12 months in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial.

In October 2022, the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease will publish the results of the Re-MIND trial. This trial has shown that patients with Alzheimer’s disease who consume a nutritional supplement containing fish oil, carotenoids and vitamin E benefit from targeted nutritional intervention. The main outcomes included slower rates of disease progression and greater improvements in mood and memory (as reported by the carers) of patients receiving the active intervention. The Editor-In-Chief, Prof George Perry, says “Re-MIND adds strong clinical evidence to the growing body of data supporting a key role for nutrition in reducing the incidence and slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease with supplements.”

The Re-MIND trial was led by Professor John Nolan and Dr Rebecca Power from the NRCI, working with Prof Ríona Mulcahy, Consultant Physician in General and Geriatric Medicine at University Hospital Waterford. The supplements used in the trial were supplied by  Industrial Organica (IOSA) of Mexico and are commercially available as ReMind™ in Europe and the UK and Memory Health® in the USA.

Click here to read the press release from the South East Technological University in Ireland of which the NRCI is a part.

Click here to read the pre-press online publication of the paper which will be published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Volume (90) Issue (1) on 25 October. DOI: 10.3233/JAD-220556

The 2022 BON conference presented a lifetime achievement award to Mr José Torres to honour his remarkable career in the development of production techniques for the ingredients of supplements containing carotenoids and towards sponsoring research into their applications. Below are two photographs of José taken at the 2018 and 2022 conferences.

José Torres was born in December 1933 in Monterrey, Mexico, number six and eldest son in a family of eight. He studied Chemical Engineering at Monterrey Tech where he captained the American Football team for three years during which they won the Championship in two of them. After graduating in 1956, he did his M.Sc., also in Chemical Engineering, at the University of Wisconsin.

José formed his first company in 1956 and later he founded Industrial Orgánica, SA (IOSA) in 1966, followed by several other companies to support the work of IOSA. The company is involved in the research, production, manufacture and purification of Carotenoids, extracted from locally grown marigold plants, to produce high quality formulations for Human and Animal Nutrition. Under his leadership, IOSA has been granted 14 US and WIPO patents for several unique processes and formulations. 

Dr Alan Howard first met José and his colleagues in the mid-1990s. They worked together with the research and clinical trials at WIT to uncover the function of Meso-Zeaxanthin within macular carotenoid products for the treatment of Age-related Macular Degeneration.  

The second BON (Brain and Ocular Nutrition) conference was held in the Howard Theatre at Downing College from 27th to 29th July. This was the fifth conference on Macular Carotenoids sponsored by the Foundation.

This conference, held over from 2021 due to the pandemic, was attended by over 130 scientists and commercial partners. There were twenty four scientific presentations and a number of poster presentation from young researchers. The organising committee made a special effort to encourage younger scientists to participate. Each of the nine scientific session had two chairs with one being a young researcher.

There were three awards presented at the gala dinner on the Thursday evening:
The Alan Howard Medal for Best E-Poster:
1st Place:  Mr. Warren Roche
2nd Place:  Mr. Emmanuel Kofi-Addo
3rd Place:  Ms. Mickeal Key

The Invited Speaker Award:
1st Place:  Dr. Christopher Zwilling
2nd Place:  Ms. Uzoamaka Nwagbo

The Early Investigator of the Year Award (The George Britton Medal):
1st Place:  Dr. Kwadwo Akuffo
2nd Place:  Ms. Parimala Sivaperuman

The BON committee, working together with the Howard Foundation, plan for the next conference to be held for the first time in the USA in 2025.

On 1st May 2022, the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) merged with the Institute of Technology, Carlow to form the new South East Technological University (SETU). The working title for the project to create a new university in the south east region of Ireland was TUSE or Technological University of the South East.

The Howard Foundation have sponsored research in human nutrition at WIT since 2009 and from 2016, Professor John Nolan has held the Howard Chair in Human Nutrition at WIT as well as being the director of NRCI – the Nutrition Research Centre Ireland within WIT.

The Howard Foundation will continue to support the valuable and world-leading research carried out by Professor Nolan’s group at SETU.

Click here to watch a YouTube video (1m40s) in which Professor Nolan talks about the new SETU and the facilities at the Nutrition Research Centre Ireland.