2477 - Climbing Mountains While Solving the Biggest Challenges in Drug Delivery with Ter-Antonyan Consulting LLC's Vardan Ter-Antonyan

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0:46Visit PodVerified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Varden Tarantonian. Varden, you are the founder and managing principal of Tarantonian Consulting. You're found on the web at tarantonianconsulting.com, which we have all linked up just in case anyone wants to make sure they got the correct spelling. We got that all linked up for you in the show notes. Well, Varden, it's great to have you. Thank you so much, Josh. Thanks for having me. uh really excited to talk about your superpowers and and the work you do you're a smart cookie you've been doing a lot of work and um kind of a lot of r &d consulting we'll talk about that uh very very fascinating topic um but before we do uh you're in colorado there and uh we were talking just a little bit before we hit record and you know i i always give my guests a little up.

1:45I'm like, Hey, I'm going to ask you what you do for fun outside of work. And, uh, you spared no time, uh, mentioning, uh, something I think is completely perfect. Uh, if you happen to live in Colorado, what, what, what do you do when you're not at work? Yes. So what I love doing is rock climbing, mountain climbing and hiking. So, um, rock climbing is my passion. Um, you mentioned that you have family in colorado springs well i've climbed in the garden of the in the garden of the gods i've climbed uh the towers in there yes you what oh those amazing yes oh my gosh i mean you're not i'm just gonna say i think you and i are of similar age uh and you know at similar age i think sometimes you know we're like well i don't want i would get hurt you know so So that's, that's, because that is, that is no small feet.

2:42Those are some pretty big rocks. Absolutely. And a lot of, they're tall and you have to do multi-pitch. So, you know, a hundred, every hundred feet, you anchor yourself and bring your partner with you up and then you keep going. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty exhilarating, lots of adrenaline and it's fun to be on top, you know? Yeah. What are some of your what I don't know if you have a favorite or just a favorite that comes to mind. You know, Colorado has just so much beautiful, remarkable hike, especially for me. I mean, you know, I'm in Orlando, Florida. It's flat as though as far as the eye can see, for sure.

3:23We don't get quite get that elevation. So when we get to go out to Colorado, you know, definitely love a good hike. Any any hikes that you'd recommend? Any hike? Yes, absolutely. So my favorite hike in Colorado is Chasm Lake. So Chasm Lake is a lake that is right underneath Long's Peak. Long's Peak is the only 14er that you can find in the northern part of Colorado. It's beautiful. And the lake is right underneath it. So what's different about Long's Peak is that right above the lake, that Chasm Lake, the longs peak it goes a sheer face rock about 2 000 feet of vertical yeah just goes up and so being at that lake um you are in the cirque of a longs peak which is composed of the mount lady washington and mount keener so it's like three mountains making a cirque and in the middle of those three is the lake the chasm lake so wow it's extremely beautiful it's a it's not an easy hike no i'm looking at the reviews right now it's i i just pulled it up on all trails uh so if anyone else again look up chasm lake on all trails right now and uh let's see there are 18 000 photos here for me to look yeah it's gorgeous absolutely wow yeah so you're right eight eight and a half nearly eight and a half miles long, it's over 2 ,500 feet of elevation gain.

4:58Yeah. That's, um, and I mentioned to you, um, you know, coming from, uh, sea level, which is where I live, uh, that hiking Pikes Peak was, that was the hardest thing physically I've ever done in my life. And I've run marathons, uh, and it wasn't, uh, physically grueling. It just, I just, I, it was so humbling. Uh, I literally got to a point where I could only take two to three steps and I'd have to catch my breath. Uh, it was that, um, you know, but, but there's something about endurance that's just, you just can't get any other way. Uh, you know, where you just, you tap, you have to tap into something deep inside you, uh, and endurance forces you to do that.

5:39So absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. At some point, if, if it gets to a certain point, you have to turn around because altitude sickness is no joke, but yes, you, you train your endurance by climbing and hiking and doing all that. So, well, Varden, I've got your website pulled up, tarantonianconsulting.com. I see you on the cover of global healthcare magazine. So give it, do you give us a quick overview of your superpowers here? Cause again, expert R and D formulation, scale up consulting, worked in pharmaceuticals, have cannabis, food, Bev, cosmetics, medical devices, dietary supplements, you do it all.

6:21Yes. So I had a 20 plus years of career in, in this industry, you know, but you know, I pride myself in being in lots of different directions. So expanding and growing in different directions in terms of, you know, not only R and D and formulations, but quality and regulatory and pretty much everywhere in the company. So what we do at Tarantonian Consulting is we help pharma and dietary supplement companies stop losing time and money on technical and operational bottlenecks. And so they can launch commercialized products faster, scale manufacturing with confidence and more efficiently, and grow their business without constant firefights.

7:17Are you on the kind of the, you don't get involved in the regulation side of things, that aspect of go-to-market. It's more the operational? So I actually, so mostly operational, yes. So technical and operational. So that includes actually creating the product, actually scaling up the product so it's one thing a product in the lab and just like a kilo of it it's another thing 100 kilos or 200 kilos or a thousand kilos you know it's totally different so those aspects however um i have immense experience in dealing with the fda in quality and regulatory aspects of it and fda submissions of products and uh you know um active pharmaceutical ingredients and so on so if a client really needs help with that i do provide that service as well but it's not it's not one of the core kind of things that i work with um services but uh yeah if if if there's a question like that you know there is a level at which i can i can be dangerous so to speak or you know, answer their questions really well or provide help with that.

8:36Yeah. My impression is that in your your industry is very exciting right now. I feel like there's a there it feels to me like there's been quite an escalation of R &D. And I think just movement is that can you give us maybe just like a state of the union for kind of, you know, among the clients that you serve in the areas that you work in, you know, life sciences and product formulation, that sort of thing. It just seems like there's a lot of buzz. Yes, yes, a lot of buzz. So, you know, mostly the clients that I work with are very much interested in something that's called nanotechnology and nanoscience.

9:32And this is something that I have immense experience in, which is why I'm able to help them a lot with that. So, you know, it's one thing to take a drug, right, or a medicine. It's another thing, how much of that medicine really gets absorbed by your body and how much gets excreted. And so the difference between that is what's called a bioavailability. So a lot of drugs and medicines that are very helpful are what's called lipophilic, or they don't dissolve in water. They dissolve in fats and oils and stuff. And so because they don't dissolve in water, they don't get absorbed in the body. They just get excreted.

10:17And so the biggest thing right now, the biggest buzz and the biggest things that companies are looking for is experts in enhancement of bioavailability or absorption in the body. And so that's where I come in. That's where the clients can literally dissolve oil in water. So everybody knows oil doesn't dissolve in water, but we can. So by means of nanotechnology. So we're talking about nano emulsions we're talking about uh liposomes and cyclodextrin inclusion complexes and i mean big words self nano self nano emulsified drug delivery systems um so these are all originating from the pharmaceutical world but um dietary supplement companies currently are going crazy for technologies like that.

11:15These technologies have never been used in dietary supplements. So they've always, companies will just package their oil into a capsule or anything like that and just sell it, right? But not telling people that only 5 % of the active ingredient is actually absorbed. The rest is excreted because it's not bioavailable. Now they're consulting with me on how do we turn this bioavailable? It's another and another buzz out there is how to control the release of the active ingredient inside the body. So, you know, like if you just take the product, it goes in like, let's say it is bioavailable, right?

12:00You take it, it goes, you know, through your stomach into the small intestine and it just gets absorbed and done. That's it. Two hours later, you're out. You know, the effects are not working anymore. So what the clients are looking for is how do we make it so that it releases over eight hours, not two hours? Or let's do an immediate release and a sustained release. So now we're talking about some kind of encapsulation technology that would allow a certain amount of drug to be released right away and some amount to be released slowly over eight hours. So lots of clients like that as well. So there is, yeah, in the pharma world, these technologies are known.

12:52You know, if you go to Pfizer or Eli Lilly or whatever, there's people who, you know, see, that's why Pfizer doesn't consult with me because they have specialists in that area, like buckets full, right? But smaller companies or companies who are not, you know, who don't have those specialists, they find me and they consult with me. Hmm. Uh, your website, uh, is tarantonian consulting.com. Uh, so I would assume, you know, um, you know, a nutritional company that wants to create a formula, you know, pharmaceutical, can you give me maybe just a few, um, types of companies that probably should reach out to you that, that, that you've done some really great work with?

13:42Of course, of course. So a company who wants to develop an oral pouch that releases nicotine or certain active ingredients through the oral mucosa, for example, a company who wants to. And I'm telling you clients that I've worked with successfully and, you know, they've launched their products. They're doing immensely well out there on the market right now. So a company who wants to develop an immediate release tablet for specific active ingredients that you wouldn't find in it, like cannabinoids, for example, specific cannabinoids. um a company you know who wants to develop a sustained release gummies um you know a company so a company who wants to develop a dissolvable powder that um it you know people can take after the parties so that they don't have um the after effects from the part like um how do you call it like hangover and stuff like that.

14:48So it prevents hangover. You take some before and you take some after the party and you're good the next day, right? So a powder that is hydrating, kind of like liquid IV, but maybe with some side benefits or working better than the liquid IV, so to speak, like a competitor. A company that wants to develop beverages with certain active ingredients in there. So all of those dietary supplement companies and more, they can contact me and literally 30 minutes of conversation where I dissect what they need, and then we can come up with best solutions for them. Yeah. Varden Tarantonian, your website.

15:45tarantonianconsulting.com. When somebody goes to a website, what do you recommend they do? Yeah, so, you know, go to contact Varden, contact page, fill out the contact, let's schedule an exploratory call and, you know, we will definitely find the bottlenecks that you're facing, whether it is, you know, your innovation is stuck and we'll get it moving, right? Or your process is facing issues. We will dissect that and we'll find solutions for you. So the best thing to do is check out all the services that we provide and contact, okay? So establish a contact and then we'll go through everything. So the services also include anything that's related to, I don't know if you've heard it, Lean Six Sigma, which is finding defects and fixing operational inefficiencies and waste in your production.

16:56So if you have anything like that, we can help you with that. Lastly, the services include also help with executive guidance, so to speak. So if your company is in three or four different phases of lifecycle development all at once, you're in trouble. You need to talk to us because we will definitely look at it, dissect it, and put everything, prioritize everything, and put everything in perspective so you can move in the right direction. I love it. Varda and Tarantonian, your website, tarantonianconsulting.com. It's been great having you. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.

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