Our Research
How IG5 was built, from the cell up.
What Most Supplements Don't Ask
Most children's supplements begin with a familiar question: what is the child missing? The answer is usually calcium, vitamin D, protein, or zinc. Fill the gap, and growth should follow.
IG5 started with a different question: what if the building blocks are already there, but the body's growth processes are not using them efficiently?
This is the difference between filling a deficiency and supporting efficiency. Both matter. But the efficiency side has been largely overlooked.
Screening With Human Primary Cells
To find natural extracts that actually support growth at the cellular level, we use human primary cells, the gold standard in cell-based research. Because different parts of the body contribute to growth in different ways, we screen with cells from each:
- Bone and muscle cells: we measure how each extract affects the way these cells respond to IGF-1, a key growth factor in bone development.
- Liver cells: the liver plays a central role in the body's growth processes, including the production of IGF-1. We screen for extracts that support this process in isolated liver cells.
Each extract is tested in controlled side-by-side comparisons. Most show no meaningful effect. The few that do move to the next stage.
Precision Extraction
A promising extract is not a finished ingredient. A single plant extract can contain hundreds of compounds, most of which do nothing useful.
We break it down using analytical chemistry (HPLC and mass spectrometry), separating it into individual fractions. Each fraction goes back into the same cell assay. Only those that show the same cellular effect are kept, then refined further through supercritical CO₂ extraction and crystallization to increase purity. The refined fraction is verified against the same primary cells one more time.
This cycle (screen, separate, retest, refine) repeats until we isolate the active components and remove inactive or potentially harmful material.
Why Day and Night?
The body's growth-related processes are not constant. They follow a rhythm.As explained in How Growth Works, the body does much of its internal growth work during deep sleep, while bone and muscle development continues through the active hours that follow.
These are different biological windows with different needs. The two screening tracks map naturally onto this rhythm:
- Night formula: built from extracts screened on liver cells, selected to support the body's overnight growth processes
- Day formula: built from extracts screened on bone and muscle cells, selected to support bone and muscle development during active hours
Active fractions from each track were then evaluated through large-scale combination testing to identify how different extracts work together. The result is a balanced day and night formula, optimized not only for each ingredient's individual effect, but for how they work together.
