Tony Talalay is the CEO, co-founder, and member of the board of managers of Brassica Protection Products. Talalay completed strategic licensing agreements with Johns Hopkins University and raised initial and subsequent rounds of financing for the company from friends, family, and angel investors totaling $7 million. He developed a global network of fresh sprout growers for Brassica’s initial business model. The sprout business was ultimately sold to focus on stronger growth opportunities in the dietary supplement and functional food and beverage industries. Brassica maintains a successful licensed fresh sprout business in Japan.

Health E-Insights (HEI): Did Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers, which included your father, Dr. Paul Talalay, along with Dr. Jed Fahey, accidentally discover the health benefits of broccoli?

Talalay: No, it wasn’t just an accident—much to the contrary. It was not that they were experts in plants to start with, rather this was the result of a very thoughtful scientific approach that was built on my dad’s 50 years of doing sophisticated biochemical research, much of which was focused on his philosophy of measuring things in nature.

He used to say: “If you can’t measure it then why are you doing it?” So, my dad’s first two scientific careers were very much in that vein. He did a lot of very well-recognized work on the structure of enzymes and hormonal basis of prostate cancer working with Dr. Charles Huggins, a 1966 Nobel laureate. Then in the mid-1980s, he realized that treating cancer was not the future. The problem would just get too big as the population aged and we progressed in treating other diseases. My dad worked in the lab past age 90. He was a pioneer in disease prevention, and he used to joke that in 1980, when he started this work, he could not find a meeting room small enough to give a lecture on prevention, because everybody in those days thought cancer was cancer, and your number was up, and there was nothing you could do about it.

HEI: What did their research find?

Talalay: They took a very different approach, which revolved around the natural systems in the body that protect cells against damage. We humans are being constantly assaulted by factors in the external and internal world that cause damage to cells, such as oxidants, toxins, UV rays, pollution, and processed foods, as well as the process of cell respiration itself. So, they developed a precise quantitative bioassay to measure the upregulation of protective compounds. They spent 10 years perfecting this assay.

Initially they were not even thinking about the benefits of diets rich in vegetables and fruits. But they did know that plants have sophisticated systems to protect themselves from predators and that epidemiology demonstrated that people who ate more fruits and vegetables had fewer chronic diseases. So, they started putting major families of fruits and vegetables through their assay to see which ones would increase protective enzyme activity, and they found that cruciferous vegetables boosted them more than many other foods.

Cruciferous (also known as brassica) vegetables include cauliflower, broccoli, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. But broccoli lit up their assay the most. Being true scientists, they began to investigate further. By testing many kinds of broccoli, they discovered that broccoli plants were highly variable with respect to how much of these compounds they contained. We now know that this is largely related to the genetics of the plants and growing conditions. Certain cultivars (subvarieties) have much higher concentrations of these compounds than others, but there’s no way to know this without laboratory testing. So, they started growing broccoli from seeds and identified that 3-day old broccoli sprouts had much higher concentrations than full-grown broccoli vegetables and that the broccoli seeds had the highest concentrations of these protective compounds.

Broccoli contains two compounds. A compound called glucoraphanin and an enzyme called myrosinase. They exist in separate compartments of the plant. If you chew, or crush, or bite broccoli, the walls between the compartments break. The myrosinase enzyme hydrolyzes the glucoraphanin molecule into the active molecule: sulforaphane, which is the natural agent that boosts the body’s natural protective detoxifying systems. Sulforaphane has been studied and found to be one of the most potent natural inducers of detoxification systems. But it’s volatile and not stable when you do this conversion.

HEI: Many often heard that President George H.W. Bush, the 41st U.S. president, hated eating broccoli.

Talalay: Funny you should say that. At the time the Hopkins’ scientists first published this discovery, it happened to coincide with the fact that President Bush announced he hated broccoli. He said something to the effect of, “I hate broccoli; I’m President of the United States, and my mother made me eat broccoli, and I’m not going to eat it anymore and not going to serve it on Air Force One.”

The meme that broccoli is good for cancer prevention emanated from the fact that Bush hated it, and network news aired that story in 1992. They even interviewed Bush and asked him what he thought about this news from Johns Hopkins that broccoli can prevent cancer? And he replied by saying “what am I going to do now?”

HEI: Talk about product endorsement. That’s the ultimate.

Talalay: Indeed. So, my dad and his team started growing broccoli plants in the Johns Hopkins Hospital basement. It does seem a bit odd, but this allowed them to make their discoveries about the variation in broccoli and the higher concentrations in small plants and seeds.

HEI: What was the next step?

Talalay: The next step was that they thought that fresh broccoli sprouts would become a commercial product. That’s when I became involved.

The announcement was made that broccoli sprouts had much higher enzyme levels. So we set up a network of fresh sprout growers to grow and sell broccoli sprouts with tested high levels of sulforaphane-producing compounds.

HEI: What’s your background?

Talalay: I am not a scientist. I am the son of two scientists. Along with my dad, my mother was also a professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Nevertheless, I strayed from science and went to business school. I got interested in consumer marketing. When the Hopkins scientists published the broccoli sprout findings, my dad suggested I become involved and develop a business plan. About 18 months later I had the plan, and we started selling broccoli sprouts.

For the first 10 years of the company’s existence, we were a fresh produce company. We were urged to make a pill, capsule, or tea. But the idea of being in the nutraceutical business and being an ingredient supplier was foreign to us and required completely pivoting and reinventing the company.

To this day, I think broccoli sprouts are a great way to get the health benefits of these compounds. It’s important to note that sprouts can be subject to microbial contamination. We spent much of our time during these 10 years working with the FDA to develop systems to grow sprouts cleanly with 100% hold-and-release testing and rigorous systems of sanitation.

HEI: So rather than your dad giving you business advice, you gave him business advice.

Talalay: Yes. My dad was my scientific mentor. We had friends and family investors in the company. I’d never run a business. Just consumer marketing and advertising and communications. But we made the transition to manufacture our own extracts. Practitioner brands like Thorne, Xymogen and Metagenics came to us and felt we had a compelling scientific dietary ingredient. We had to learn how to do it and grow our specific broccoli seeds that had high levels of these compounds.

Today, we grow our broccoli seeds only in the U.S. Over the years, we have tested more than 80 different varieties of broccoli seeds to find ones that were high in glucoraphanin, and reliably reproduced these levels from season-to-season. We developed a network of farmers in California’s Imperial Valley that grow for us. We developed a proprietary hot water extraction process, which allows us to concentrate the glucoraphanin and provides a clean, safe ingredient. We created the brand TrueBroc several years ago.

HEI: What continues to excite you about Brassica?

Talalay: My dad was a cancer scientist, but we weren’t making a drug. The initial concept was that if people ate more broccoli there would be less damage to the body and lower levels of chronic conditions; but also to understand what role these plant protective systems of enzymes play in detoxifying cells, and, for example, reducing damage from inflammation or UV radiation or other causes of stress on cells.

HEI: Where might the most significant growth be in your company moving forward?

Talalay: We’ve only tapped one or two areas: the nutraceutical market for pills, capsules, powders, and drink mixes. We have worked mainly in North America and Asia. I believe there are other geographical locations and applications for foods and beverages and functional foods. Of course, gummies, stick packs, beverages, and meal replacement products are other delivery systems where we think there are opportunities. But you still need to be eating your fruits and vegetables and broccoli. They have lots of fiber and vitamins and many other beneficial plant compounds. But broccoli grown commercially does not always have significant levels of compounds that produce sulforaphane. To help to upregulate your innate protective systems you need consistent levels and that’s very difficult to achieve without supplementation.

HEI: Before you came into the business, did you eat broccoli?

Talalay: I was not what my dad called “a broccoli enthusiast.” I would say a broccoli neophyte. A broccoli enthusiast is someone who eats broccoli 3-4 times a week. I ate it, but it was not my favorite vegetable. I didn’t dislike it like some people do, and some people have a genetic propensity for finding the taste extremely unpleasant.

HEI: Is expanding your sales market how you find inspiration in your work?

Talalay: I find inspiration from science that continues to grow; the science originally focused on these enzyme systems. Now there’s been an enormous amount of subsequent science to elucidate how that works and to identify many other pathways which these compounds boost. For example, sulforaphane does cross the blood-brain barrier, and it therefore has neurological benefits and helps repair damage to mitochondria.

On the disease-oriented side of the equation, where supplements do not participate, there are numerous studies being conducted with broccoli extracts on autism, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s. There’s also been an extensive amount of work done on detoxification of certain air pollutants. Large human clinical trials were conducted in China, testing against a variety of air pollutants. Broccoli extracts were shown to protect cells from damage.

It’s also important that we have good agricultural practices with our growing, controlling the seed supply, having complete transparency and traceability from the field to the ingredient and making sure we’re doing everything possible to follow the highest level of current GMPs.

HEI: Broccoli is also good for man’s best friend, right?

Talalay: Yes. Broccoli is not only good for humans, it’s good for pets. I have two dogs and Nutramax makes a pet version of their human supplement. My dogs take a broccoli supplement every day along with their joint health supplements.

HEI: From what you shared privately, you’re always on the go.

Talalay: I never wake up in the morning and worry about what I am going to do that day. There are 5,000 things that I want to do. The question is, which of these should I prioritize?