Jacques Masquelier

Who was Jacques Masquelier?

Jacques Masquelier is a scientist. In July 1948, Masquelier published his doctorate thesis upon the successful isolation and chemical description of the phytonutrient we know today as oligomeric proanthocyanidins or OPCs. That same year he filed a patent for the industrial method of producing the first botanical product based on OPCs.

Based on Masquelier’s role in the research and development of OPCs-products, their isolation, identification and therapeutic and dietary applications, two other botanical products followed. In the 1960s, a botanical medicine based on OPCs isolated from Pinus maritima bark was produced, followed ten years later by another OPCs-based medicinal product manufactured from Vitis vinifera seeds. These medicinal products are still sold in France today. During the 1980s these complex but well characterized phytonutrients were introduced on the natural products market and are now sold around the world as dietary supplements.

The postwar period, when Masquelier began his research, was marked by a surge in interest in flavanols, the group of bioactives to which proanthocyandins belong. In 1951, Australian scientist W.G.C. Forsyth first isolated flavanols from fresh coco-beans. In that same year, using Masquelier’s OPCs, the English phytochemist E.C. Bate-Smith, working at Cambridge, developed and first described a coloration method to detect the presence of proanthocyanidins in plant materials.