We need you to help complete the patenting process on a botanical drug (combination of four herbs) that effectively treats people with polycystic kidney disease. Currently there is no effective treatment for this condition, and most people end up on dialysis or with kidney transplants. The remarkable formula Dr. Yarnell has devised is a breakthrough in changing the course of the disease. Funding is needed to get it patented so that work can commence on clinical trials and getting it approved as a drug.

Below is the fruit of Phytolacca americana or pokeroot, the root of which is part of the formula:

The herbal formula Dr. Yarnell has devised for polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is known as Cystagon. It includes four herbs and in his practice has proven extremely effective. The FDA recognizes and has previously approved two other botanical drugs. Beyond helping people with PKD, getting this botanical drug approved will also be a revolutionary change in medicine. Currently almost all drugs are single molecules, but growing evidence shows that combinations of molecules (like the hundreds that are in each herb!) work better and more safely than single synthetic molecules.

Red Root Pharmaceuticals is a new company looking to make big changes in the world. Despite its tiny size, we have already struck up a research collaboration with the Swedish Polycystic Kidney Disease Center in Seattle to launch a clinical trial of the Cystagon botanical drug. We also have identified the research support group that worked to get both of the other two prior botanical drugs approved by the FDA. We will be partnering with them in the future to assure the strongest scientific team will support our success in bringing this product to market.

Red Root Pharmaceuticals is a new kind of pharmaceutical company, committed to revolutionizing medicine by making botanical drugs more widely available. It already has a candidate botanical drug, an herbal formula dubbed RRP-131 for polycystic kidney disease, and many others in the pipeline. RRP-131 will be used as a test case to show the world how valuable botanical drugs can be. Red Root urgently needs funding to complete the patenting process for RRP-131. This is the next step in FDA approval.

“Botanical drug” is a regulatory category recognized by the US FDA that allows for drugs that are composed of plant extracts or whole plants. The use of single molecule drugs has shown its limitations in the past century, and there is growing awareness in medicine for use of combinations of drugs to improve patient outcomes (for example, the use of cocktails to treat hepatitis C, HIV infection, and cancer). Unfortunately this approach still relies on the extremely expensive approach of synthesizing novel molecules. The botanical drug approach leverages the co-evolution of humans and plants to avoid many of the unexpected adverse effects and unknowns of developing novel, synthetic molecules.

Red Root Pharmaceuticals uses novel mixtures of herbs already time-tested and proven to be safe and effective through thousands of years of history. This bypasses the need for expensive, wasteful animal testing and basic human safety testing. This also greatly reduces the cost of developing botanical drugs. The US FDA recognizes this, often allowing botanical drugs to bypass preclinical and phase I trials, skipping straight to phase II and/or III efficacy trials. Because polycystic kidney disease is considered an orphan disease (if affects approximately 300,000 people in the US, which is considered a small amount), this will also greatly speed the development of RRP-131 (as the US FDA makes it much easier to develop botanical drugs for orphan diseases).