AOAC SPDS Meeting Book March 19 2015

SANNI RAJU, NATREON, INC. SPDS ASHWAGANDHA WORKING GROUP

Dr. Sanni Raju is CEO & Chairman and a founding director of Natreon, Inc. He has his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Pharmacy from India and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from University of Maryland at Baltimore. He worked for two major pharmaceutical companies - Wyeth Laboratories and Burroughs Welcome Company – in USA and some generic drug companies before founding Natreon. Natreon’s mission is to bring near pharmaceutical quality to the nutraceutical products. He is a Registered Pharmacist in New York State.

Dr. Raju is also President of GlobePharma,Inc., a manufacturer of specialized pharmaceutical equipment and quality-assurance devices that he founded in 1993. He is the inventor of and holds a number of U.S. patents in connection with the design and application of such equipment and devices and also some pharmaceutical products.

YANJUN ZHANG, HERBALIFE SPDS TEA WORKING GROUP

Dr. Yanjun Zhang is currently a Principal Scientist at Herbalife International of America in Torrance, California. Dr. Zhang obtained his PhD degree from Chinese Academy of Medical Science & Peking Union Medical College. . Prior to joining Herbalife he has more than 29 years of work experience in the field of phytochemical analysis. Dr. Zhang was the director of the Phytochemistry Core Laboratory at the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and was also assistant researcher at the UCLA’s David Geffen School of medicine. Throughout his career, Dr. Zhang has held positions as lecturer, associate professor and director at Chengde Medical College in China, was a guest professor at the National Museum of Natural History in France, and received his postdoctorate at the Bioactive Natural Products and Phytoceuticals Laboratory at Michigan State University. Dr. Zhang was instrumental in launch the Botanical Identification Program at Herbalife in 2009. Under his technical direction, the team has developed more than 90 botanical identification methods for raw material botanical ingredients used globally in Herblalife products. Since the tea chemical project launch in 2008 at UCLA, Dr. Zhang’s science team has developed chemical analytical methods for analysis of tea catechins, tea amino acids, and tea purine alkaloids content. Dr. Zhang’s team also optimized tea extraction conditions to obtain the high quality tea extracts for Herbalife products. In addition to his work at Herbalife, Dr. Zhang also developed analytical methods for pomegranate extract and pioneered analytical methods for the authentication of pomegranate juice. Currently, Dr. Zhang is a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Society of Pharmacognosy. His research has been widely reported in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Dr. Zhang’s current work is directed towards the authentication and evaluation of foods, spices and the establishment of analytical methods for botanical dietary supplements quality control.