Partner with us

The shortest route to the brain is the one we breathe through.

We are developing a spice-derived nasal spray engineered to carry its payload along the nose-to-brain pathway — past the barrier that stops most medicines for the brain.

See how it works Partner with us
8.8 million Indians
Spice-derived
Zero synthetic actives
Preclinical in vivo data
The problem

India’s memory problem is larger than its medicine cabinet

The burden is concentrated exactly where access to care is thinnest — in rural households, among older women, far from a neurologist. The medicines that do exist were not designed for them.

0
Adults over 60 living with dementia in India
Published literature
0
Estimated prevalence in the over-60 population
Published literature
0
Of that burden sits in rural India
Published literature
0
Typical duration of benefit from current symptomatic therapy
Published literature

What today’s medicines do

Cholinesterase inhibitors such as donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine, and the NMDA antagonist memantine, are the standard of care. They help many people, and they work primarily by managing symptoms rather than altering the underlying disease process.

What they struggle with

Delivered orally and systemically, they must cross the blood–brain barrier to act — a barrier that admits very little. Long-term oral use is associated with gastrointestinal effects that affect adherence. And the benefit, for most people, is measured in a small number of years.

The limitation is not the molecule. It is the route.

The insight

The brain is sealed. But it is not sealed everywhere.

At the roof of the nasal cavity, the olfactory and trigeminal nerves pass directly into the brain. It is the one place in the body where the nervous system meets the outside world without the blood–brain barrier in between.

So we stopped trying to break through the wall, and went looking for the door.

The oral route

Through the whole body, to reach one organ

A tablet is absorbed in the gut, diluted across the bloodstream, and then meets the blood–brain barrier — which admits very little of what arrives. The long way round, and most of the dose never gets there.

GutBloodstreamWhole bodyBarrier
The nose-to-brain route

Eight centimetres, and no barrier in the way

A mist settles on the olfactory epithelium, where the olfactory and trigeminal nerves reach the outside world directly. The route goes around the barrier rather than through it — and it is the one this formulation is designed to take.

Nasal cavityOlfactory nerveBrain
Skip the animation
OUTER SHELL ADHESIVE SURFACE ACTIVE CORE OLFACTORY EPITHELIUM BLOOD–BRAIN BARRIER — CLOSED OLFACTORY PATHWAY — OPEN HIPPOCAMPUS
01 — The source

It begins in the lab.

From the “queen of spices.”

A naturally occurring plant source. A gentle, solvent-free extraction. What comes out is a concentrated set of active compounds — and nothing else.

02 — The carrier

A vehicle built for a specific journey.

Those compounds are enclosed in a microscopic carrier — engineered to hold together on the way in, and to stay where it lands. The carrier is what turns a promising compound into a deliverable one.

03 — The route

Eight centimetres, not eight hours.

A fine mist settles on the olfactory epithelium at the roof of the nasal cavity — the one place where nerve endings reach the outside world directly. Non-invasive, and designed to be self-administered.

04 — The crossing

Around the barrier, not through it.

The blood–brain barrier stops most molecules that reach it through the bloodstream. The olfactory and trigeminal nerves offer a different route, and it is the route this formulation is designed to take.

05 — The arrival

Confirmed in the brains of treated mice.

Laboratory analysis of brain tissue from treated animals detected the delivered compounds — confirming that the route worked exactly as it was designed to.

Preclinical — in vivo, murine

Not yet studied in humans.

The evidence

What we did, what we found, and how far that takes us

Every result below comes from preclinical work carried out in our own laboratory. Each carries the level of evidence it rests on. None of it has yet been tested in people.

ESI-MS, brain homogenate

The bioactives reached the brain

After intranasal administration, mass-spectrometry analysis of brain tissue from treated mice detected the formulation’s bioactive constituents. This confirms the delivery route did what it was designed to do.

Preclinical — in vivo, murine
Morris water maze

Treated mice navigated better

Across a standard test of spatial learning and memory, treated animals showed improved performance. Velocity vector analysis confirmed the effect reflected navigation rather than differences in movement.

Preclinical — in vivo, murine
APP/PS1 transgenic model

The effect held in a disease model

The improvement was observed in both wild-type animals and in APP/PS1 transgenic mice, a widely used model carrying human Alzheimer’s-associated mutations.

Preclinical — in vivo, murine

What this does not yet tell us

Mice are not people. A result in an animal model tells us a mechanism is worth pursuing; it does not tell us the formulation is safe or effective in humans. Establishing that requires formal toxicology, regulatory approval from the CDSCO, and clinical trials — in that order, and in the open.

That work is ahead of us, not behind us. We think saying so plainly is the only way to be worth believing when we eventually have more to report.

Why it matters

Lab work, measured by who it reaches

A result that stays in a journal helps nobody. Every decision in this programme — the source we chose, the way we extract it, the way it is taken — was made against a single question: will this reach the people who actually need it? Below is what that commitment means in practice, across the three areas it shapes.

SDG 3Good health & wellbeing
SDG 10Reduced inequalities
01 — Social

Built for the households farthest from a neurologist

Nearly seven in ten people living with dementia in India are in rural areas, and slightly more than half are women. A self-administrable nasal format is designed to work where swallowing several tablets a day under supervision is difficult and a specialist visit is a day’s journey.

Design goal — not yet validated

Where the burden actually sits

The weight of dementia in India falls disproportionately on rural households and on older women — the two groups farthest from specialist neurological care, and the least likely to be reached by a therapy that assumes a clinic visit.

A format that does not need a caregiver

Multiple daily tablets require someone to administer and track them. A nasal format is designed to be taken by the person themselves, without water, without swallowing difficulty, and without supervision.

Ageing at home, for longer

India’s over-60 population is growing quickly. Interventions for cognitive health that are simple to take and affordable to sustain support independence and dignity in the place most people would rather be — their own home.

Built to a goal, not to a badge

The Sustainable Development Goals marked on this section were the design constraint the programme was built under, not a label applied to it afterwards.

SDG 12Responsible production
SDG 13Climate action
02 — Environmental

Green chemistry, from the field to the bottle

A solvent-free extraction — no petrochemicals, no residue in the product, and no solvent waste leaving the process. The plant material left behind is clean and compostable, and the formulation is built on food-grade excipients.

No petrochemical solvents

Conventional plant extraction relies on industrial solvents that must be removed from the product and disposed of afterwards. Our route uses none — which means no residue to remove and no solvent waste stream to manage.

A closed loop, not an emission

The extraction medium is recovered and reused inside the process rather than released. The process is a consumer of it, not a source of it.

Nothing thrown away

The plant material remaining after extraction is clean, solvent-free and compostable, which makes the process effectively zero-waste rather than nominally so.

A crop, not a chemical plant

Our starting material is an agricultural commodity already grown at scale by Indian smallholders. A multi-step synthetic route carries a far heavier solvent, energy and waste burden per unit than growing something and extracting it gently.

SDG 8Decent work & growth
SDG 9Industry & innovation
03 — Economic

A different cost curve, not a discount

Affordability that depends on a discount does not survive scale. Building the therapy around an agricultural input and a solvent-free process changes the cost structure itself — which is what makes a genuinely low cost of therapy plausible rather than promotional.

Design goal — not yet validated

Cost structure beats price cuts

A price reduction is a decision that can be reversed. A cost structure is a property of how the thing is made. An agricultural input, a solvent-free process and food-grade excipients produce a fundamentally different curve as volume rises.

Value that reaches the field

Demand for the crop as a therapeutic input adds a second revenue stream to farms already growing it, in the same rural economies most affected by the condition we are working on.

Capability that stays in India

A delivery platform developed here reduces reliance on imported neurological therapeutics and builds domestic formulation capability that outlives any single product.

Lighter load on families

The cost of dementia is rarely just the medicine. It is the caregiving hours, the lost income and the travel. A therapy that is simple to take at home is designed to reduce all three.

The people

A research company built to finish what it started

Theranutras exists because the people who did this work concluded that proving something in a laboratory is not the same as delivering it to the people who need it.

Prof. Paramita Bhattacharjee

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer · PI

She led the development of both halves of the platform — the extraction route and the delivery carrier engineered to carry it.

Anamika Das

Co-founder · Operations & Scientific Development

Translates laboratory protocol into repeatable process, scale-up and manufacturing partnerships.

Dr. Debalina Kundu

Co-founder · Scientific Strategy

Sets research direction against the landscape outside the lab, and keeps the programme aimed at a real gap.

Sayantan Mondal

Director · Brand & Marketing

Makes sure the product reaches the people who need it — reliably, and without the message getting lost on the way.

Shruti Saha

Director · Brand & Outreach

Leads how the Theranutras story and mission are shared with the world, and who gets to hear it first.

Soumabha Das

Director · Partnerships & Business Development

Builds the relationships that carry the mission into its next stage, and grows them responsibly.

The laboratory work is done. The next stage needs partners.

We are in conversation with investors, pharmaceutical licensing partners, contract manufacturers and public research funders about carrying this programme through its regulatory and clinical stages. If that is you, we would like to hear from you.

Start a conversation

Or write to us directly at theranutrasresearch07@gmail.com