Blackberries as a business
4/30/2007 Lexington, KY Karla Ward Herald-Leader.com A local company with ties to the University of Kentucky plans to market a dietary supplement, skin cream and chewing gum based on blackberry extract. Paige Shumate Short, a Paris businesswoman, and Russell Mumper, a UK researcher, are the co-founders of Four Tigers LLC, which Short calls a "berryceutical" company. In the near future, they hope to find licensing partners -- maybe a chewing gum company such as Wrigley or a supplement supplier such as GNC Ð to sell their over-the-counter products, which will not require Food and Drug Administration approval. Short's father, the late Wayne Shumate, began growing antioxidant-rich blackberries at WindStone Farms in Paris more than two decades ago, and Four Tigers now has an exclusive partnership with the farm. In the longer term, Short and Mumper hope to use the revenue stream from their supplement, gum and cream to develop FDA-approved drugs that incorporate blackberry extract. Studies have found berries are full of powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. In an early study, Mumper found that the extract stopped the growth of colon cancer cells in a petri dish, but much more research would have to be done to determine whether the same would be true of cancer cells in the human body. Short said the company's "pot of gold" would be an injectable drug. While eating blackberries is healthful, the body does not absorb them well, and Mumper said "you've got to eat a lot of berries to give you an [...]