In 1814, the French explorer Michael Eugene Chevrel isolated the first flavonoid, later called quercetin. In Russia, the study of flavonoids was initiated by the famous botanist Ivan Borodin in 1873.
A new stage in the research of bioflavonoids began in 1936 when the American scientist of Hungarian origin Szent-Györgyi Albert (who later received the Nobel Prize in Medicine “for research on biological oxidation, and especially for the discovery of vitamin C and fumaric acid catalysis”) and Istvan Rusniak found that a complete cure of scurvy was possible only when vitamin C was combined with another substance that increased capillary resistance, and they isolated this substance (from citrus fruits) and called it vitamin P. Later it turned out that vitamin P is not a single substance, but a number of compounds, and the name “Vitamin P” was replaced by the term “Bioflavonoids”.
In the late 1940s, the Oregon Forest Products Laboratory (US) began investigating the chemical composition of the bark of western pine trees in order to determine its possible uses. One of the first species to be thoroughly studied was Douglas-fir bark, where a bioflavonoid with a very powerful antioxidant effect was found and identified as Taxifolin, also known as Dihydroquercetin (Pew, John C., 1947). For a long time it was believed that Dihydroquercetin (DHQ) was found only in expensive raw materials such as citrus fruits, grape seeds, Japanese Sophora, rose petals, and stems of Gingko biloba.
The level of development of laboratory and industrial techniques of the XX century did not allow to obtain bioflavonoids, including Dihydroquercetin, in large quantities, which put a barrier to their wide implementation in preventive and clinical medicine. The obstacle was expensive raw materials, small production volumes and, accordingly, extremely high market value on the world market.
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The uniqueness of this scientific discovery was that the substance from the plant was obtained not in the form of a tincture, ointment, extract (extract), as is customary to use phytopreparations, but in the form of an individual substance - a crystalline powder.
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In the late 1960s, Professor N.A. Tyukavkina with a group of scientists from The Irkutsk Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences (K.I. Lapteva, L. A. Ostroukhova) together with scientists from St. Petersburg State Forestry University named after S. M. Kirov (S. D. Antonovskaya) and The V. N. Sukachev Forest Institute of Siberian Branch of RAS (G. D. Antonova) for the first time isolated dihydroquercetin from larch wood.
The uniqueness of this scientific discovery was that the substance from the plant was obtained not in the form of a tincture, ointment, extract (extract), as is customary to use phytopreparations, but in the form of an individual substance – a crystalline powder. Now it became possible to use it in capsules or pills, in concentrations hundreds of times greater than those of the former extracts. So, there was a revolution in the study of bioflavonoids; a natural active substance, which could easily compete with synthetic drugs, was obtained.
Today, the main raw material for obtaining DHQ on an industrial scale in the Russian Federation is Siberian larch (Larix Sibirica Ledeb) and Dahurian larch (Larix Dahurica Turcz). Larch wood contains up to 2.5% of flavonoids. DHQ accounts for 90-95% of the total flavonoid content.
Numerous laboratory and clinical studies have shown that Dihydroquercetin, isolated from larch, has a high antioxidant activity, much higher than previously known to science natural analogues.
Dihydroquercetin has become widely known in scientific circles around the world, primarily in the United States, Canada, European countries, South Korea, Japan and, naturally, in Russia, which is where the history of ingredient commercialization began.
In 2012, a Russian biotech company Robios was created in the city of Serpukhov, specifically focused on obtaining and introducing of Dihydroquercetin and its related products to the market. At that time, the market of DHQ producers in the Russian Federation was very limited, and in fact remains so to this day. Robios Llc managed to gather a team of outstanding scientists and technologists in a short time, improve the existing water-alcohol extraction technology of Dihydroquercetin, built a modern production facility meeting the requirements of international standards (GMP) and established a logistics chain of supply of chaff (raw materials for Dihydroquercetin) from Siberia.
The extraction technology for Dihydroquercetin established by Robios Llc allows us to obtain highly active forms of Dihydroquercetin from Dahurian larch, with a very high purity (90%-94%) on so-called, the first extraction, without conducting additional chromatographic purifications of the product. This approach ensures the ultra-high antioxidant activity of the Dihydroquercetin VitaRost that we produce and its ability to resist the ageing process.
Sources: V.V. Tatarinov, S.V. Orlova, E.A. Nikitina, E.V. Prokopenko, A.N. Vodolazkaya, Yu. Dihydroquercetin as a potential immunonutrient in complex therapy COVID-19.2021; I.V. Tkacheva, Scientific and practical substantiation of the use of bioflavonoids, water-soluble polysaccharides, probiotic drugs in poultry and pond fish farming: thesis. 2019.