Antioxidants from Animal Blood May Soon Show Up on the Supplement Shelf

By Mike Switzer

Published March 20, 2015 at 12:42 AM EDT

These days, most everybody knows the importance of antioxidants in your daily diet. Well, South Carolina's technology awards program known as Innovision handed out their 2014 awards late last year and one of the Small Enterprise Awards went to an Upstate company that has developed a proprietary method for extraction of antioxidants from animal blood. Right now these antioxidants are only being marketed to the pet food industry, but the company says humans are next.

Mike Switzer interviews Alexey Vertegel, CEO of VRM Labs and co-inventor of the technology, all while also performing his duties as an associate professor of Bioengineering at Clemson University.

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Mike Switzer

After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.

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