Lexaria Bioscience Corp

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Lexaria remains committed to achieving success through innovation. It is not necessarily an easy path and, while setbacks must be expected, we have been very fortunate that DehydraTECH continues to impress. Lexaria has enjoyed a high rate of success in its R&D pursuits for many years, and 2023 did not disappoint. Although no technology and no company is capable of producing a 100% rate of success in R&D programs, we have truly been blessed with positivity.

Because we focus on innovation, later in the year we took some chances and experimented to learn whether DehydraTECH might work with an entirely new class of molecules that we had never worked with before. That educated risk-taking may have led to the most important discovery in the Company’s existence. Read on!

**Hypertension.**In February 2023 we issued follow-up results from our 66-person DehydraTECH-CBD hypertension study HYPER-H21-4, wherein we communicated our discovery that we had lowered the quantity of catestatin in the human blood stream. This could have important implications for better understanding a mechanism of action of how cannabidiol processed with DehydraTECH was capable of lowering human blood pressure, and further implications with a potentially positive bias towards our regulatory pathway for same.

In May, we released our final set of results from the DehydraTECH-CBD hypertension study HYPER-H21-4 wherein we reported on DehydraTECH-CBD’s ability to lowerinterleukin inflammatory biomarkers by statistically significant amounts of between 19% and 43%. At the time, Dr. Phillip Ainslie, Scientific Advisor to Lexaria in the field of cardiovascular diseases and Lead Investigator to our hypertension studies, remarked that, "There is some pre-clinical evidence for the anti-inflammatory actions of CBD, but this is likely the most convincing evidence in humans that I have ever seen. The bigger picture is that inflammation is the key basis of atherosclerosis, and several pro-inflammatory agents have been examined as potential mediators of the biochemical pathways of lesion formation. Other ‘common' diseases or disorders associated with chronic inflammation include fatty liver disease; Type 1 & 2 diabetes mellitus; inflammatory bowel disease; asthma; lung diseases chronic kidney disease; rheumatoid arthritis and obesity. Part of the reason why many of these diseases lead to cardiovascular disease is via chronic inflammation."

**Cholesterol, Triglyceride and Weight Loss Management.**In March 2023 we released news detailing the results from an 8-week study in 32 rodents wherein a new, unique version of DehydraTECH-CBD had impressive results related to diabetes and weight loss. In that study – planned and executed mostly before the world was deluged with information regarding weight loss from the GLP-1 drug classes – we demonstrated that this specific version of DehydraTECH-CBD lowered triglyceride levels, and surprisingly, body weight differential during the 8-week study period. Lexaria shareholders know that we are a data-driven company: instead of following narrow “top-down” mandates, we follow the data. In this case, the discovery that DehydraTECH processing of cannabidiol enabled previously-unknown benefits of great interest to diabetics caused well-founded excitement within the Lexaria management and scientific teams. This was the birth of our interest in the fields of diabetes and weight loss and sparked our subsequent work in the GLP-1 sector, noted below.

**Human Hormones.**In May 2023 we informed the world that DehydraTECH processing of the human estrogen hormones estradiol and estrone greatly enhanced their ability to be absorbed into the bloodstream in a study of 20 rodents. Delivery improvements of 900% through to 12,500% were achieved; highlighting the dramatic improvements that DehydraTECH processing can offer to the normally poor bioavailability of orally-delivered hormones. Although these early-stage results were compelling, we lacked the budgets to conduct follow-on studies. However, when budgetary constraints lessen we hope to pursue additional studies to further validate these exceptional results.

**Blood Glucose and Diabetes.**We had continued to process the data from our March 2024 animal diabetes study, and in June we were delighted to be able to report that our uniquely formulated DehydraTECH-CBD was also able to reduce blood sugar by a statistically significant level of 19.9%. According to the Center for Disease Control, managing your blood sugar levels is important to avoid diabetes-related conditions such as vision loss, heart disease, and kidney disease.

As if that was not enough, we also examined kidney function in the animals and discovered that we had reduced the ratio of blood urea nitrogen to creatinine by a statistically significant 55.1%. This is yet another area of investigation where we will have to conduct additional research at some later date, give the significance this discovery could have to those suffering from kidney diseases.

**Reduced Risk Oral Nicotine.**Last summer we reported results from our long-anticipated human oral nicotine study. That study demonstrated that when Lexaria’s technology is applied to oral nicotine, the speed of absorption into the bloodstream is faster than the #1 brand of oral nicotine in the world, Zyn®, and also faster than the #3 brand in the USA, On!®. That study also carefully evaluated subjective performance, and the study participants rated DehydraTECH-nicotine as #1 for experiences such as euphoria, tolerability, pleasure; with DehydraTECH-nicotine generating thelowest incidences of mouth and throat burn, nausea, and hiccups; compared to Zyn and On!.