The story of how Cetyl Myristoleate was discovered, isolated and created started in Bethesda, Maryland in 1962. It was there that a man named Dr. Harry W. Diehl was working at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. The NIH is a division of the US Government, and is responsible for research into diseases, afflictions and vaccines. Dr. Diehl worked in the same building where arthritis research was being conducted, however, he was no expert on arthritis. His specialty was dealing with sugar synthesis. In fact, his method of sugar synthesis was even used to prepare the oral polio vaccine that was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk.But Dr. Diehl took a special interest in arthritis when a friend developed an extreme case of it. Since it was not his specialty, he turned his own research from sugar synthesis to arthritis, hoping to find something useful for his friend.He started out the way a lot of researchers might, with mice. It was already well known that there was a known toxin called mycobacterium butyricum, or Freund’s adjuvant. When injected , this toxin is known to cause animals to become arthritic.You can only imagine Harry Diehl’s surprise, though, when mice didn’t display those symptoms when injected. No matter what he tried, Dr. Diehl could not introduce arthritis into mice. This could only mean one thing….mice were immune to the toxin, and thus were immune to arthritis. Dr. Diehl’s next objective, then, was to identify and isolate the reason for the immunity of the mice. Utilizing a process known as thin layer chromatography on methylene chloride extract from macerated mice, Diehl noticed a mysterious compound. It was a long, tedious job, working on his own in his spare time, but Diehl finally found, isolated, and identified the extract. It was cetyl myristoleate and it protected mice from arthritis.

Once identified and isolated, the last step was to re-create CM8 synthetically, so it could be available in quantity without affecting the mice population. Harry developed a way of synthesizing Cetyl Myristoleate by combining cetyl alcohol with myristoleic acid and found that the synthesized form of Cetyl Myristoleate was just as effective in providing immunity to adjuvant-induced arthritis as the naturally occurring form (extracted from mice).