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DNAP's SEC filing. Interesting document.
http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/edgardoc/finSys_main.asp?dcn=0001070876-02-000030&nad=
Ann
Article on DNAP's Collaboration with Famous epidemologist:
http://www.pinksheets.com/quote/news.jsp?url=fis_story.asp%3Ftextpath%3DCOMTEX%5Cpr%5C2004%5C06%5C28...
Ann
ReliaGene's Certificate of Accreditation
http://www.nfstc.org/Org%20Files/Accred%20Docs/Reliagene/Cert.pdf
Ann
Interesting article from NY Times:
In Drug Research, the Guinea Pigs of Choice Are Humans
By ANDREW POLLACK, The New York Times
(Aug. 4) -- Researchers at the University of Munich repeated the experiment 70 times: a healthy volunteer would receive a chemical injection, then be left alone to ride out an artificially induced panic attack.
AP
From the next room, doctors watched the volunteer's restlessness via video camera, measured the quickening pulse and rise in blood pressure, and used an intercom to question the person about his or her feelings of impending doom. The attacks typically lasted 5 to 10 minutes.
Each volunteer was put through the same test a few days later, but this time most of them first received an experimental anti-anxiety drug. The drug quelled anxiety well enough in those experiments last year that its developer, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, gained the confidence to conduct large clinical trials.
The company's approach is part of a trend in the pharmaceutical industry. Drug researchers are conducting small, fast, relatively inexpensive tests on people to get a quick gauge of a drug's promise before committing to full-scale clinical trials that may involve hundreds of patients, millions of dollars and many years of study. Often called experimental medicine, the approach is meant to reduce the huge costs of drug development and speed the most promising treatments into the marketplace.
In the past, many of the tests might have been done only on animals. That might seem to raise ethical concerns, but the people who regulate and monitor drug experiments say that no problems have risen so far. And scientists and industry executives, while acknowledging the potential for ethical issues, say that experiments on people are more reliable, because animal tests often fail to accurately predict whether a drug will work on people.
"Humans are the experimental animals here," said Roger Perlmutter, executive vice president for research and development at Amgen, a large biotechnology company that has embraced the new approach.
Amgen, for instance, gave different potential arthritis drugs to human volunteers and then used a blood test to gauge the best one to take forward into clinical trials. The results were almost the opposite of what Amgen found when it conducted similar tests in animals.
Pfizer has done experiments in which volunteers who took drugs were injected with radioactive tracers and given PET scans to see if the drugs were reaching their expected targets in the body. The company has abandoned several drugs that did not, said Stephen A. Williams, who directs clinical technology for the company.
It is too soon to know whether experimental medicine will really transform drug development. But the industry needs to do something. Despite rising research and development spending, last year only 21 new compounds were approved as drugs, compared with more than 30 a year in the late 1990's.
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All clinical trials, of course, are experiments on people. But subjects might be exposed to more scans, blood tests and biopsies than in a more conventional trial.
"The treatment burden on the patients goes up," conceded Stephen Dilly, who runs drug development at Chiron, a biotechnology company. "You're squeezing the last drop of data out of every patient you treat."
But because the experiments are carefully monitored, many experts say the patients face no higher dangers than with medical research generally. "These kinds of studies don't really have that much higher risk than the other studies,'' said P. Pearl O'Rourke, director of human research affairs for Partners Healthcare, which runs some of the Harvard teaching hospitals.
Like others in the field, Dr. O'Rourke, who helps review and monitor human research conducted in hospitals including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's, says the early tests might mean fewer people over all are exposed to experimental drugs, by weeding out dead-end drugs before larger trials begin. "We may be asking a small number of individuals to participate in a more meticulous study that perhaps in the past took us 2,000 patients to answer,'' she said.
In these new, highly exploratory studies, the subjects may sometimes be perfectly healthy volunteers - as in the anxiety-drug experiment. In other cases, as with cancer therapies, the participants are usually people already afflicted with the illness being studied.
As with full-scale trials, the clinical experiments, which can be part of conventional trials or done separately, must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and by review boards at each trial site.
Pat El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the federal Office for Human Research Protections, said officials there were not aware of any problems arising from such experiments.
Lawrence J. Lesko, director of the office of clinical pharmacology and biopharmaceutics at the F.D.A., said the procedures used "don't seem to be overly burdensome and invasive." He said some patients have concerns about their genetic data being shared with others but that companies take steps to protect such privacy.
One volunteer, Ken Garabadian, who has an intestinal tumor, said he was glad to participate in a study of an experimental cancer drug from Bristol-Myers Squibb, even though it will mean a biopsy, a gene test and at least a couple of PET scans.
"There's always a risk, but there's a larger risk when you don't do it," said Mr. Garabadian, 54, a gasket salesman from Bellingham, Mass. "I don't feel like you go into these things feeling like a guinea pig."
Only about 8 percent of drugs entering clinical trials now make it to market, according to the F.D.A., and companies want to be able to spot losers before a lot is spent.
"What is the biggest single cost in drug development?" said Jeffrey M. Leiden, president of the pharmaceutical group at Abbott Laboratories. "It's late failures."
Even a small improvement in the ability to predict failures could save $100 million in development costs per drug, the F.D.A. said in a March report. In an expansion beyond its usual role of regulating drugs, the agency said it planned to help the pharmaceutical industry develop techniques to speed drugs to market, including ways to predict safety and effectiveness early.
The move toward human experiments is also being driven by new technology that makes it possible to better assess the effect a drug is having inside the body. So-called gene chips, slivers of glass containing strands of DNA, can measure which genes are turned on or off in the body after a drug is taken.
And new forms of imaging go beyond merely visualizing anatomical structures, as X-rays do, to showing processes inside the body, sometimes at the molecular level. Functional MRI, a variation on the common form of medical imaging, can show which areas of the brain are spurred into action by a drug. Positron emission tomography, or PET, can be used to tell if a drug is binding to the target protein in the body.
Pfizer is now building a research center in New Haven to perform early stage drug testing, with PET scanning provided at nearby Yale University. GlaxoSmithKline is building a clinical imaging center with Imperial College London.
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Another imaging technique, called optical coherence tomography, is being used to study the effect inside the eye of a drug that Genentech is testing to treat macular degeneration, a retina-damaging disease that can cause blindness. Anatomical changes can be seen with the tomography in a week or two after the drug is given, while an effect on eyesight might not be evident for a couple of months, according to Philip J. Rosenfeld, a trial investigator at the University of Miami.
In the future, genetic tests, images or other "biomarkers" of a drug's effectiveness might be used by the F.D.A. to approve drugs, which could mean a huge acceleration in drug development. Already, for instance, AIDS drugs can be approved if they reduce the level of the virus and raise the level of immune system cells in the blood, without having to wait years to see if the drugs prolong survival.
But before that could happen the F.D.A. would need more proof that the markers correlate with a meaningful benefit to patients, Dr. Lesko said. To win approval of its drug, for instance, Genentech will have to show it improves vision, not just that it causes anatomical changes in the eye.
At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where Mr. Garabadian is being voluntarily tested, scientists are using PET scans to quickly determine if drugs work against a type of cancer called gastrointestinal stromal tumor. The PET scan can detect the uptake of glucose, which tumors need to nourish their growth.
Using such scanning, Dana-Farber researchers discovered a few years ago, to their amazement, that glucose uptake had stopped - a sign the tumor was dying - as early as one day after some patients took the Novartis drug Gleevec. The more conventional way to tell if a cancer drug is working - waiting for a tumor to shrink - can take weeks, said Annick D. Van den Abbeele, the director of nuclear medicine and PET at Dana-Farber.
Since the Gleevec tests, the Dana-Farber scientists have used the technique to quickly establish effectiveness of a Pfizer drug, SU-11248. Now they are testing one from Bristol-Myers, BMS-354825, which Mr. Garabadian is receiving.
The trial is a phase 1 clinical trial, which usually tests only a drug's safety. But on top of those safety tests "we put an extra layer of biologically exciting testing," said George Demetri, director of the sarcoma center at Dana-Farber.
Mr. Garabadian also took part in the studies of the Gleevec and Pfizer studies. Both drugs worked for a time, though eventually his cancer worsened again. Mr. Garabadian said that when the PET scans gave him an early sign the drugs were working "the psychological boost was just enormous."
Experimental medicine is changing the old linear pattern of drug testing: first in animals; then phase 1 trials in people to test safety and help determine the dose; phase 2 trials to test efficacy and determine optimal doses; and finally, phase 3 trials involving large numbers of patients in which the drug is often compared with another drug or a placebo.
While not abandoning animal studies, scientists might now move back and forth between animal and human studies. Phase 1 trials might be used to gauge efficacy, not just safety. In some cases, human testing is being done even before a drug is given - for example, to validate the imaging system that will be used in the trial. Some scientists call these "phase 0" trials.
Some companies are also using imaging to help determine the proper dose of drugs by seeing how much drug it takes to saturate the drug's target in the body. Merck found that in some cases it needed far lower doses - which usually means fewer side effects - than if using the more typical criterion of how much the patients could tolerate, said Richard Hargreaves, the company's executive director for imaging.
In some cases, experimental medicine can raise the cost of early trials. PET scans, for instance, cost about $5,000. Dr. Dilly of Chiron said a phase 1 trial with imaging and genetic tests could cost nearly $100,000 a patient, compared with $10,000 to $15,000 for a standard trial.
But executives say those expenses are trivial if they allow the company to avoid an unsuccessful multimillion-dollar clinical trial later.
The impact of experimental medicine could become clear in a few years, as the early drugs that have gone through the process move closer to market. "We are going to find out in five years," said Dr. Hargreaves of Merck, "whether we've done the right thing."
08-04-04 12:20 EDT
Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company.
Ann
Updated: 04:37 PM EDT
Trial Set for Man in Louisiana Serial Killings
By MELINDA DESLATTE, AP
BATON ROUGE, La. (July 31) - Geralyn DeSoto's murder did not generate many headlines. At the time, her death had not yet been linked to the serial killings that were gripping south Louisiana residents in fear.
But DeSoto's killing is set to be the first for which Derrick Todd Lee - now connected to DeSoto's murder by DNA evidence - will be tried. The state Supreme Court has refused to delay his trial and jury selection was set to begin Monday.
DeSoto, 21, was found stabbed and beaten to death and her neck slashed in her home the day she registered for graduate school at Louisiana State University in January 2002.
Lee denies he did it.
"If Derrick Todd Lee's alibi is that he wasn't there, that he was over in Cancun, Mexico, cooling his heels with a couple of buddies, then he ought to bring over his buddies to say 'We were with him cooling his heels,"' prosecutor Tony Clayton said. "The problem is his DNA was left under the fingernails of my victim."
DNA evidence has also linked Lee to the murders of six other women from April 1998 to March 2003, police say.
Lee was arrested in May 2003 after a nearly yearlong search and has been indicted on murder charges in the deaths of DeSoto, Trineisha Dene Colomb in Lafayette and Charlotte Murray Pace in Baton Rouge. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the two cases besides DeSoto's.
Prosecutors charged Lee with attempted murder and attempted rape in an attack on Diane Alexander, who survived and is expected to testify that Lee was her attacker.
Lee has pleaded innocent to all the charges.
Clayton is prosecuting Lee on a second-degree murder charge in DeSoto's death because he cannot prove an underlying felony, such as forced entry or rape, which is required for a first-degree murder charge in Louisiana.
Still, he said, second-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence and is easier to prosecute than a death penalty case, which has complications that can lead to delays.
Lee's lawyer, assistant public defender Tommy Thompson, has been seeking delays in the DeSoto case. He has declined to speak to reporters.
Thompson has said in appeals court documents that he only received evidence in the case from prosecutors as recently as a few weeks ago, including items taken from the crime scene and DNA test results.
Thompson said he has also not been able to find all the witnesses he needs to adequately defend Lee and, perhaps, suggest that someone else killed DeSoto.
State District Judge Robin Free has refused to let Thompson use entries from DeSoto's diaries that Thompson said includes pages about DeSoto's husband "hitting on her, beating her, cursing her, threatening to kill her if she ever left him." Thompson said he was trying to track down people who knew of the abuse.
Free said prosecutors have given Thompson more evidence than he is entitled to receive and that Thompson has had enough time to get ready.
Prosecutors say they intend to present evidence against Lee from the killing of Colomb and the attack on Alexander and plan to introduce details of some of Lee's stalking and peeping Tom convictions.
07/31/04 13:46 EDT
Ann
eb:
So sorry - let me try to post the contents - let me know.
Ann
Trial set in Luisiana killings:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20040731134709990007&_mpc=news%2e10%2e11
Ann
Sorry:
Here's the page:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=suspect
Ann
Scroll down, not quite to center. Interesting that DNAPrint's cracking the Louisianna serial case release is listed among the International Terrorist (Al-Queda, etc.) stories:
J.M. Dutton's report on DNAP on their web site:
DNAPrint genomics Speculative Buy Rating in Initiating Coverage; Patented Leading-Edge Quantitative Genomics Classification And Analysis Technology
By Sherry Grisewood, CFA
June 08, 2004. DNAPrint genomics (OTCBB: DNAP) is a late-stage development company with Patented Leading-Edge Quantitative Genomics Classification And Analysis Technology. The Company’s technology enables the rapid and cost-effective analysis of DNA material to determine frequency probabilities of gene locations, and therefore, predict specific genetic traits in individuals such as Bio-Geographical Ancestry Admixture or pharmacogenomic profile based upon the frequency of gene location and other markers present in DNA. The Company has developed two commercial products from its state-of-the-art proprietary ADMIXMAP(TM) technology platform for use in forensics and consumer-oriented genealogy analysis. The shares are rated Speculative Buy.
Ann
Who's Who at Family Tree by DNA:
http://www.familytreedna.com/about.html
Ann
Biometrics Council on Terrorism meeting - attended by Tony Frudakis:
http://www.findbiometrics.com/Pages/news_releases/news451.html
Ann
Jab:
Not trying to be facetious, but, sounds like you're funning us.
Ann
Jaber Jaws:
What else can the coincidence between the Convention and the Shareholders meeting on the same date mean? Tony wants to be nominated! - (ask a s.....?)
Ann
Slop:
And, yet, here's another article of interest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3232744.stm
Ann
Global DNA Plan:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3809575.stm
Ann
Bag:
Sounds Great to me!
Ann
OT: Now, now children!
Ann
Easy:
Sun's seems to be trading under the SCII symbol.
Have a great day - Ann
Stock:
Sorry about the AOL--connection. Sun City Ind. appears as 2 symbols on the NAB/US Exchange. SNID: a non-valid symbol. But, it trades as SCII.
Ann
Slop - Sun City Industries is listed on the exchange as follows:
http://aolsvc.pf.aol.com/us/quotes/quotesandnews?exch=NAB&from=lookup&sym=E%3ANAB%3ASCII
Ann
Current SBI Firm Profile:
http://pro-net.sba.gov/sybase-bin/pro-net.cgi?FNC=firmlist_submit__Afirmlist_html___PN708074
Ann
Reliagene & Y-STR testing:
http://www.y-plex.com/
Ann
More on Reliagene:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/030904/new_dnalab001.shtml
Ann
Ice:
Since I got home late tonight - I will post contents sometime tomorrow, unless someone beats me to it. - Ann
This Newsletter was enclosed in proxy packet, along with information to many unanswered investor questions and etc.
Ann
I'm w/Schwabb and received my proxy today.
Ann
Previous post re: Sun City Industries
Ann
2004 files 8-K for Changes in Control:
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040706/scii.ob8-k.html
Ann
Info on Sun Shell Industries:
(old news)
http://bankrupt.com/TCR_Public/970529.MBX
Ann
You sometimes try to write/sound intelligent - then, make one or two typos and it kinda goes down the drain. Still, somehow hope I got my point across. (My excuse is that's it's late and I'm up with the night owls). - lol
Ann
Cos:
My concept of Tony, representing DNAP, is not biased to his assumption to presently charge top dollars on some testings in the forensics community on the products DNAP currently offers or represents. I sense he is a truly genuine person, solely having insight on ethics and reality. By lowering the fees on certain tests DNAP is currently marketing, in eventuality and time, as DNAP's potential grows and gains the recognition it deserves, perhaps, we will soon be thouroughly in the limelight we deserve, as word gets out throughout the federal, forensics, criminal/pharmacogenomic, etc. communities re: our viability, capability and outstanding contributions, we may gain greater recognition and momentum to eventually "Make Up in Volume!" MHO - If We Go - It Will Happen! (and a smart way to do business!! Util it truly gains momentum...and we go "To Da Moon!!"). I'm just can't wait to cheer DNAP when our rockets moon fire up! How 'bout it, Chris?
http://www.icq.com/friendship/pages/browse_page_7782.php
Again, JMHO
Ann
FDA tests, dates and approvals:
Pharmacogenomics
Over the next 10 years, the worldwide pharmaceutical market is expected to grow from $320 billion to $2 trillion, driven primarily by the flood of new drug targets identified through genomics and through the co-development of drugs and accompanying genomics response tests. The primary objective of DNAPrintTM‘s near term research and development efforts in pharmacogenomics will be to expand our library of predictive drug response tests to include multiple therapeutic areas which include commonly used FDA approved drug therapies.
We currently have two pharmacogenomic tests in development:
OVANOMETM- DNAPrintTM scientists are working on a genomic-based diagnostic tool to match ovarian cancer patients with the most suitable form and dose of chemotherapy. Currently, cancer patients are treated with anti-cancer drugs whose efficacy is known in terms of population averages. In reality, individual cancer patients exhibit unpredictable and unique responses to virtually all commonly used chemotherapeutic compounds. Individual genetic differences have long been suspected to play a role in this variable drug response. For cancer patients, decisions about treatment regimes are often fateful, and second chances at treatment are sometimes not successful. A better understanding of the relationship between genes and drug response can replace the current trial and error process of chemotherapy treatment and guide physicians and patients toward the optimal treatments at the outset of therapy. In early March 2000, DNAPrintTM announced success with this project at the Society of Gynecological Oncologists meeting in Miami, and at the BIO IT World Expo in Boston.
Our scientists have identified several Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (“SNP”) markers whose haploid alleles are predictive for non-response to the Taxol and Carboplatin drug combination, a drug combination manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb for the treatment of ovarian cancer.
Once funding sufficient to screen 250 patients at $1,000 per patient is received, OVANOMETM will be tested in clinical trials for monitoring and reporting on the use of Taxol and Carboplatin. Our Chief Medical Officer, Hector J. Gomez, MD, PhD will lead the clinical development process.
FDA rules regarding pharmacogenomics testing are still evolving and we are seeking additional guidance from the FDA on this issue. Until OVANOMETM is FDA approved or deemed to not require FDA approval, we plan on generating revenues through physician guided Investigative New Drug studies.
STATINOMETM- This test is currently being developed for the cardiac drug market. STATINOMETM is being developed in conjunction with a group of Jacksonville, Florida physicians to classify patients as adverse responders or good responders to a class of drugs known as “statins”. Statins are drugs used to treat patients who are at increased risk of heart disease. Approximately 50% of the U.S. population is at risk of heart disease as a result of high cholesterol. While statins have been demonstrated to be effective at cholesterol reduction, decreasing incidence of heart disease by 10.3% from 1990 to 1994, adverse reactions can include liver damage and kidney failure. Approximately 2-5% of patients must discontinue statin use due to these adverse side effects. Once perfected, we believe STATINOMETM will be able to dramatically improve the rewards associated with taking statins by obviating the risks associated with adverse response. STATINOMETM is projected to enter clinical studies for FDA approval by late 2004 or early 2005.
Ann
Check THIS Out all:
A NEW DNAP PRESS RELEASE:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20040709172009990008
Ann
Sun City Ind. 10K report:
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040210/scii.ob10ksb.html
Ann
(To All) - Annual Newsletter, in it's entirety: - Ann
Dear Shareholder, July 04
The past year your company achieved several significant milestones. Most importantly, we closed a private placement that should provide consistent cash flow for the next 20 plus months and provides the new senior management team with the capital needed to increase our revenues. Although the transaction results in shareholder dilution, the rate of dilution is average to the industry for the size of the investment. Remember, without substantial financing, the company would have been unable to continue its operations. A little over a year ago, the previous management team described this need and considered a funding transaction that they hoped would generate proceeds of $1 million to the company. The private placement that we closed in December should provide $8.0 million, and we have already received $2.1 million. We are using the money to build the business, to add personnel and to increase our research and development.
As you know, our executive management team has just reached its first anniversary at the company. The executive team appointed last May consists of our CFO and COO, Monica Tamborini, our Chief Medical Officer, Hector J. Gomez, MD, PhD and me, your Chief Executive Officer and President. Dr. Gomez is also our Chairman of the Board. Of course, Dr. Tony Frudakis, our founder and scientific visionary is Chief Scientific Officer and continues his aggressive leadership of DNAPrint’s technology future. We have added other staff and now total 14 persons. Outside consulting services add 3 other persons as part time consultants and specialists.
Growth and success can be a double-edged sword if you have not planned for it. We are developing the Company’s foundation to prepare it for future growth. This much-needed infrastructure includes policies, procedures and training. While we remain a development enterprise, we are proactively building towards our future so that as growth occurs, we will be prepared. While it is vital to create awareness and demand for our products and services, we must also be able to deliver what we promise. The foundation that we construct now can ensure our success in the years to come.
As we reach our first anniversary as a management team, I am encouraged by our progress. We improved our consumer product ANCESTRYbyDNA™ and upgraded it from a 71-marker test to a 175-marker test. We intend to continue improving the product, its accuracy and its ability to scan a broader platform of genetic heritage. Our goal is to expand our current 4 categories of inherited genetic markers to 8 and possibly 16 categories. Additionally, we have linked with Family Tree Legends (from Pearl Street Software), a software tool that helps our customers load their DNA results into a family file. Finally, we have added a new test, “STR Map.” It is highly accurate and uses the same underlying technology as our crime scene identification and paternity testing. Our collaboration with Pearl Street Software permits our customers to attach their genetic information to their personal genealogical information.
Our approach allows genealogists to compare a paper trail with a genetic marker history of the family, helping individuals and families identify past and present relatives. We will continue to provide consumer based products to the genealogy market. The information we acquire from our consumer products customers can be leveraged for application in other, potentially more lucrative markets.
For example, we believe the same factors that allow us to understand a person’s heritage can help us to understand a person’s drug response, disease susceptibility and response to various treatment regimes. Similarly, we can use what we learn about genealogy to provide better products for law enforcement in our forensics product line. While the markets we service may seem diverse, the cumulative information we receive is applicable to our entire spectrum of product development. By utilizing all of our markets, we expand awareness and diversify revenue sources. Our goal is to create a product mix that provides future growth and development across a number of chosen markets.
We launched our first product into the forensics market with stunning results. The data we provided to a Louisiana task force from a crime scene donor sample helped redirect the task force’s investigation, culminating in the arrest of the accused. We are currently involved with over 40 ongoing investigations and expect that revenues will continue to grow as more detectives find out about our product and services. DNAWitnessTM 2.0 is the first product offering a presumptive test utilizing crime scene donor DNA. It provides detectives with a ‘fuzzy photograph’ that may confirm an eyewitness report or, in the absence of a witness, act as a “virtual witness” by providing information about the DNA donor. Over the next several years, we will continue to expand our products’ ability to provide an image of the individual that may include eye color, hair color and other phenotypic descriptors unique to the donor’s genetic heritage.
More recently, London’s premier crime organization, the New Scotland Yard, has used our test to help investigate a serial rapist of elderly women. The New Scotland Yard has encouraged the London Metropolitan Police and other police organizations to employ our test to help narrow the investigative field, saving time, money and potentially saving lives.
I recognize that many of our investors downplay the significance of our forensics and genealogy businesses. Indeed, some investors have urged us to focus exclusively on the pharmacogenomics or pharmaceutical markets. As I have noted, however, there is an important connection between these markets. Perhaps most importantly, we believe that the connections are even more valuable than the revenues we derive from forensics and genealogy.
Our forensic products address both the public good in helping to catch criminals and the public defenders in helping innocent people, falsely convicted, prove their innocence. Similarly, our genealogy products help people connect their past and perhaps, in so doing, help them understand more about the present and their relationship to one another.
Our efforts in pharmaceutical development parallel our efforts in genealogy and forensics. Not only do people inherit unique physical markers for common traits, like eye color, hair color, skin shade, height or weight; we also inherit our ancestors’ abilities to respond to medications and to succumb to certain diseases. What do I mean by “parallel our efforts”? The more we learn about a patient’s family history, the more we know about a patient’s potential drug response or lack of response. Similarly, the more we learn about a person’s genetic heritage (eye color, hair color and other markers), the more we will know about a patient’s susceptibility to certain diseases or a patient’s potential response to new or experimental medicines.
Genealogists are not as interested in a person’s eye color or hair color as the forensics community or the police. Similarly, police are not interested in a person’s genetic heritage or family tree. In the pharmaceutical development industry, however, we are interested in both, and in other markers hidden in the complex human gene code.
We live in a new era of drug development, discovery and utilization. DNAPrint’s technology can inform a patient and a physician whether or not the patient will respond positively or negatively to a particular drug. Why is this important? It is important to the patient and the doctor because drug response or the lack of drug response is a key to effective disease management. Our test helps establish a dialogue between the patient, the doctor, the medicine and the disease. We believe that dialogue is a crucial component in successful disease management.
Once we identify patients unlikely to respond to a particular drug, we can focus our efforts on determining why this occurs. Is it a unique genetic marker set? Is it inherited? Do other members of the patient’s family have the same predisposition? With accurate answers to these questions, perhaps we can allow the science of discovery to lead us in the right direction, to a new drug therapy or new treatment regime.
Our recent announcement of a collaboration agreement with the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida is just the beginning of our research collaborations in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical segment has great potential rewards but takes longer to achieve market penetration.
We have a dual strategy for this market, first, identifying patients responding to current, approved medications and, second, licensing novel technologies or products that will provide the company with its own product line. As a shareholder, you should not expect revenues from this segment to leap onto the income statement. As I mentioned, this market requires a sustained and committed effort. But each step we take toward receiving approval for a test or a drug brings us closer to our overall objectives, to be the best genomics pharmaceutical company and to deliver high quality, effective drugs to the patients that need them.
Over the course of the last year, you may have seen us on 20/20, Nightline, ABC News, CNN and other news shows, or you may have read about us in a newspaper, magazine or on the internet. These appearances often trigger inquiries or comments on how we communicate with our shareholders and the investment community as a whole, and I would like to address that subject.
We are often asked why we don't issue more press releases to spread the word about the Company’s activities. As you may know, all companies in the microcap market are frequently placed in a negative light because of the unscrupulous actions of certain microcap companies that attempt to manipulate the price of their stock by issuing frequent press releases. Some of these releases are misleading, and some of them are about immaterial matters – in either case they are an attempt to generate enthusiasm for that company’s stock and to raise its price. In our view, these actions are unethical and often illegal. Because of this public perception of the microcap market, we are very conservative in our communications with the investing public. We will not allow your company to engage in such manipulative tactics. Therefore, we do not issue press releases frequently, and we do not issue them unless we believe we have something significant to say.
Alternatively, we are sometimes criticized for responding slowly or poorly to direct inquiries by shareholders. Although we are a small company, many of you would be amazed at the number of communications we receive. As many of you know, Federal law generally prohibits us from disclosing material information about the Company or its operations on a selective basis. Therefore, we either must disclose information publicly, or not disclose it at all. In some circumstances, shareholder inquiries, particularly inquiries about ongoing research and development, would require us to announce publicly information that we do not believe is ripe for release. In these circumstances, we simply cannot release the information in response to a shareholder inquiry.
On the other hand, many shareholder inquiries we receive do not request material information. Sometimes they seek clarification of items we have previously reported, or they may pertain to what the investing public might consider an "immaterial" matter. Unfortunately, responding to these inquiries requires employee time and sometimes company money. We do not have an "investor relations" department staffed by personnel whose exclusive duty is to deal with investors. At this stage of the company's development, we cannot afford to pay employees for exclusive investor relations’ duty. Therefore, we outsource this function, and we are obliged to pay for it.
As anyone who has followed the Company's financial reports is aware, until the closing of the private placement in late 2003, your company suffered from an almost continuous cash flow crisis. Since the closing of the private placement, the crisis has abated, but we still do not have excess cash. Therefore, while we intend to use some proceeds of the private placement to improve our investor relations efforts, we ask you to bear with us in that area. When there are material items to report, we will either report them in an SEC filing or in a press release.
I have looked historically at the volume of trades that have occurred since March of 2001, and I was astonished to learn that nearly 2.1 trillion shares have traded during that time period. This volume indicates to me that we have a very active group of buyers and sellers of our stock, and that we are trading on average about 3.0 million shares per day. We believe that active buying and selling of our stock is good for the market and our shareholders. Personally, I believe our management team has made great strides in improving our company, and I have tremendous confidence in their abilities.
Finally, before closing, you will note that you have received a sheet of six numbered coupons for our service, ANCESTRYbyDNA, priced at $158.00 with the coupon. Feel free to pass them out to people that you know or perhaps use them for your own family. You can visit our website www.dnaprint.com and search for ANCESTRYbyDNA or go directly to www.ancestrybydna.com for more information. The normal price for the service is $219.00. We encourage you to take advantage of this special offer and try it out. You might be surprised at your results. I appreciate your consideration in this one time offer to our shareholders and their friends.
In the coming year, you can expect to see more advances in our technology and an increased effort to maximize shareholder value through the building of revenues and eventually, profits. I very much appreciate the support and dedication of our many shareholders, and I look forward to continuing to serve as the Chief Executive Officer and President of this company.
Respectfully and appreciatively,
Richard Gabriel
Chief Executive Officer and President
© 2004 DNAPrint genomics.
Thank you, Easy -
Ann
My best 4th Wishes To All:
http://www.njagyouth.org/liberty.htm
(simply click on sky area with pointer of your mouse)
A very Happy 4th of July all!
Ann
Grateful:
Not many on this board at the moment - But, let me be the first to thank you for posting the Newsletter. I'm sure tomorrow/Friday will generate a lot of response.
Take care,
Ann