John Mauldin just came out with this "outside the box" news letter, however it hasn't been posted on his web site yet, so I have copied and pasted the important bits here, Star is mentioned first by John, and then later by Patrick cox as one of the 3 companies with the biggest breakthrough technologies, good read, really like John's take on some of the articles put out by the dark side LOL.
The world appears fixated on the fiscal cliff. And indeed, I have been shooting a video here in NYC all day with my friends (the usual brilliant suspects, et al.) on how the world looks after the election. And to say that my close-up interview/conversation with the chiefs of staff of Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Rob Portman (David Krone and Rob Lehman, respectively) had more than a few blockbuster moments is an understatement.
Everything is in editing as we speak. You get the good parts without the other five hours of total time we shot. (Which is why you don’t want it truly live. You just don’t have the time or patience. I do value your time!). But the entire tape of the DC session will be available. Want to know what the true insiders think, raw and unfiltered? The guys who have been talking for weeks before the election about what to do now? You can watch the whole thing when it goes live next Tuesday. Click on this link to make sure you get the signup instructions sent directly to you.
Now, for today’s Outside the Box I want to get way outside the box and look to the future and what is most important about it: our lives and our health. I assigned my good amigo Pat Cox of Breakthrough Technology Alert the task of picking the three most transformational happenings in the biotechnology world today. Out of a candidate list that included scores of topics, it was tough for him to narrow it down to just three. If I had let him, he would have given me his top 20. There is just so much happening. But he did winnow the field and sent me the following piece, written in his own compelling style. I have already read it twice and will file this one away to read yet again. Pat is my “go-to-guy” on new tech (and not just biotech, but that is where the edge is lately).
I don’t do this often, but if you like what you read and would like to follow Pat as I do, you can subscribe to his service here. I have not seen the link but assume it is a risk-free trial. His service is not cheap, but I really rely on it to keep me surfing along the edge of the future. It is a great antidote to the depressing news about governments and deficits and taxes.
The three technologies/companies that Pat writes about are controversial. Traditional metrics would ignore them. No earnings, having to constantly raise cash, etc. In other words, start-up biotech companies. These stocks are not for the faint of heart. They are not stocks you should buy if you check your portfolio once a day or even once a month! And you should not buy them based on this very short analysis. DO YOUR HOMEWORK! If you are looking for a 10% move, then just don’t. Biotech stocks are not for stock jockeys.
Indeed, after this article was written, important news broke (today!) about two of these companies. BioTime CEO Dr. Michael West yesterday signed a letter of intent to acquire Geron's massive portfolio of stem-cell-related patents. Because Geron was the pioneer in stem-cell development, hundreds of the basic technologies in the field were invented and patented by the company. No one knows the value of Geron’s patent portfolio better than Mike, because he founded Geron and was the creater of most of the patents!
If the current leader in this area, BioTime, consummates this deal to bring most of the critical stem-cell IP into one organization, it would be a huge leap for regenerative medicine. This kind of consolidation is typical in maturing biotechnologies, because former competitors find they can move forward together faster than they can separately. This move by BioTime brings us closer to One Ring to Rule Them All in the stem-cell world, but instead of the darkness of Mordor it portends a very bright future for mankind, as Mike is driven like no other man I know to bring the benefits of stem-cell technology to a medical provider very near you. His obsession is your future life-saving/enhancing medicine.
BioTime has for some years been the target of constant short attacks, some of which I frankly consider unethical and even bordering on fraud. The culprits short the stock and then write load up the usual stock websites with half-truths, outright lies, and very bad “research,” trying to convince current owners to sell and others to short, covering their own shorts on the movement they create. Sadly, it works. This is the opposite of pump and dump, but if you play that game you lose. Note that NONE of the critics understand biotech, have any serious credentials, or are regulated. They operate mostly in a very shadowy world. Just look at the long list of serious people who are involved with BioTime. Then ask who the hell their critics are and who is advising them. And realize they are covering their shorts when you sell.
Note that biotech stocks are particularly vulnerable to this sort of scam. They are almost all burning through mountains of cash in the pursuit of some dream. Many of them do indeed crash and burn before they get to a safe landing. It is a world fraught with danger; but as with gold stocks, if you find the mother lode you can be in for a very pleasant experience. Do NOT invest in biotechs without doing a lot of homework. That being said, I think it is one of the most exciting spaces of the future. We are just at the beginning of a biotech revolution that will astound and amaze. Enough said.
Star Scientific has also been targeted by these forces of darkness. Most recently, the bad guys have claimed that the company is out of money and in financial trouble. CEO Jonnie Williams and a few of his friends exposed that lie yesterday by injecting $20 million of their own money into the company, exercising warrants, and covering expenses for probably more than a year. Is Star losing lots of money each month? Clearly, but Williams and friends put in almost two years of “burn rate.” There are VERY deep pockets who are true believers. You may or may not like the technology, and you can argue the business model, but don’t doubt this company’s ability to raise cash or the passion of its management. You can debate the value of the company but not its cash reserves or commitment. Click here to learn more.
It is time to hit the send button. I am a little tired, but it’s a good exhausted. I spent the day with Jim Bianco, Mohamed El-Erian, Barry Habib, Barry Ritholtz, Gary Shilling and Rich Yamarone. We analyzed the future in a fast-paced, energetic, and intense (though friendly) manner. It was an adrenaline rush – and you get to share it. I am off to my room to slow down for the evening before I fly back in the morning. Then I’m home for ten days, where I hope to get into the gym almost every day. I miss my gym more than my own bed, actually. Have a great week, and sign up for the Post-Election Summit – then give me your feedback.
I see family and turkey and prime, mushrooms and cakes and pies in my future. On Wednesday, I forget about economics and become a world famous (to my family and friends) chef. I will immodestly state that I make a wicked prime, and no one has ever had my mushrooms without saying they are the best. They are not an item in your heart-friendly diet, but they are worth every artery-clogging calorie. Have a great week and enjoy your family and friends. I know I will.
Your not so humble about his cooking analyst,
Now Patrick Cox.
Treating Autoimmune Disorders with a Natural Supplement
Let me begin by saying that I don't blame you if are skeptical about what I'm going to tell you now. It took me six months to come to grips with the reality and the magnitude of this discovery, despite plenty of solid research from world-class scientists. Finally, I did two things. I talked to scientists at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Roskamp Institute, and I began taking the supplement and giving it to friends and family.
A big part of my skepticism came from the fact that this is a “natural” product, a nutraceutical. I've seen so much junk science come out of the healthfood store subculture, my prejudices against anything with a nutraceutical label ran very deep.
Having accepted the possibility that a natural substance might actually outperform drugs, I was led to the work of respected Prof. Claudio Franceschi who founded the Laboratory of Immunology the University of Bologna, Italy. Franceschi developed a theory of accelerating aging that he termed “inflammaging.” His work is widely available on the Web but I'm going to give you my very abbreviated take on his work.
Until mid-20th Century in the Western world, the most hazard time in a person's life was birth and the following months. Economic progress and medical advances have changed that but we all come from lineages that have one thing in common. Our ancestors' immune systems were fully activated from their very first moments to fight injury and infection. If it were not so, they would not have survived to pass on their genes to you.
What worked for much younger populations in earlier times, however, is a major problem today. Your immune system is on constant high alert, ready at a moment's notice to mount an “inflammatory response” to infections or injuries common only a century ago. The highly tuned immune system you inherited from your ancestors is not equipped for less hazardous times. I think of our immune systems as guards suffering from sleep deprivation and a caffeine overdose with with their fingers on hair-triggers.
Our immune systems are designed to over-react because, in the past, a false alarm was far less dangerous than a weak or delayed response. We see evidence of this in young people who have allergies. It's not the pollen or the peanuts that make people sick, it's their own overreacting immune systems. As we age, the immune system misfires more and more often and the resulting cellular damage provokes even more inflammation. It's a vicious accelerating circle that contributes to all diseases.
Inflammaging
In the paper “Inflamm-aging: An Evolutionary Perspective on Immunosenescence,” Franceschi and his team point out “... that the persistence of inflammatory stimuli over time represents the biologic background (first hit) favoring the susceptibility to age-related diseases/disabilities. A second hit (absence of robust gene variants and/or presence of frail gene variants) is likely necessary to develop overt organ-specific age-related diseases having an inflammatory pathogenesis, such as atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, and diabetes.”
In other words, you may have a genetic predisposition to atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis or diabetes but it is your own immune system that triggers these conditions. Many researchers studying this phenomenon have focused on NF-?B, nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells, as the root cause of the problem.
NF-kappa, as it is often abbreviated, is the alarm system of our immune system. NF-kappa is a transcription factor capable of activating your DNA to mount an immune defense. They exist outside of the nucleus in virtually every cell in your body but, if they detect something indicating injury or infection, they migrate into the nucleus and initiate an immune response.
As we age, NF-kappa calls in more and more false alarms until we are in a state of chronic low-level inflammation. Eventually, this chronic inflammation tends to localize at some point of vulnerability until we have a health-threatening disease that ends our lives prematurely.
For this reason, the quest for a substance that would calm down NF kappa activation without suppressing legitimate immune system function has been called the “holy grail” of modern medicine. To make a long story short, that holy grail has been found in members of the solanaceous plant family such as eggplant, peppers and tobacco.
In fact, this alkyloid was discovered while searching for an effective smoking cessation aid. Researchers have long known that there's more in tobacco that leads smokers to smoke than nicotine. This was obvious due to fact that smoking has a powerful and pleasurable calming effects, via MAO inhibition, that nicotine does not provide. Moreover, despite the clear dangers of smoking, the tobacco plant has known medicinal values.
Jonnie Williams, the CEO of a company dedicated to lessening the harm of tobacco, Star Scientific (STSI), discovered that extra ingredient. After spending years and millions of dollars to find a safe food form of the substance, he proved safety with two years of Harvard University toxicity studies. Then, he put smoking cessation mints containing his anatabine citrate on the market.
Almost immediately, people began posting reports online of improvements in a variety of inflammation-related conditions. Intrigued, Williams took his substance to several important research organizations, including The Roskamp Institute and the Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Personally, since I began using the supplement two years ago, I've seen remarkable improvements in health. Due to a bad car accident while in college, I was far into the inflammaging death spiral. Tibial periostitis (shin splints) kept me even from walking distances. Severe cervical arthritis had left my right arm mostly unusable, making most upper-body exercises nearly impossible. Within months, both conditions were significantly improved. After two years, I have no symptoms. As a result, I was able to begin running and lifting weights again.
Additionally, my seasonal allergies, while still occasionally evident, no longer take me down. The same is true for my family and many of my friends. My optometrist was surprised to find that sight in my right eye, lost through trauma-induced glaucoma, had improved. I've dropped more weight than I care to admit and my numbers are all better.
Many others, including golfer Fred Couples, have also found life-changing relief from serious inflammatory conditions. Jonnie Williams wife's thyroiditis, on the verge of surgery, reversed and no longer bothers her.
I could go on and on, but anecdotal stories such as these are not valid scientific evidence, though I've heard scores of even more remarkable accounts from the research scientists themselves who have given the supplement to friends and family. Even the dramatically successful results that have come from humanized animal studies are not proof that this natural compound, found in the over-the-counter nutraceutical Anatabloc, will work similarly in humans. The conditions we've seen improved in animals include, by the way, Alzheimer's, thyroiditis and multiple sclerosis.
Unbelievable, right? I understand. So I'm not telling you to trust me or take the product.
Rather, I'm telling you to watch for final data from three major studies underway now. The Roskamp Institute, a leading brain disease research center, is doing the Alzheimer's trials. Roskamp, directed by two of the scientists who discovered the amyloid connection to AD, Drs. Michael Mullan and Fiona Crawford, has also overseen an interventional study in Flint Michigan. Dr. Paul Ladenson, with colleagues from Johns Hopkins is following up an animal study of thyroiditis with a human study.
Preliminary results from the Flint study have been released, revealing that the active ingredient in Anatabloc, at much lower doses than I take, reduced C-Reactive Protein (CRP) levels in 61% of diabetic patients. CRPs are associated with the onset and severity of diabetes and other diseases. These patients, in fact, all had other diseases and extremely high CRPs so results are far more significant than they may appear.
The Hopkins thyroid study results should be completed in December but we already know that the human studies are providing statistically significant results. If they are similar to the animal studies, which provided the first ever improvements in thyroid disease, we will be able to reach extremely important scientifically validated conclusion.
In fact, positive results from all three ongoing studies would confirm the thesis that anatabine citrate does not treat specific diseases directly. Rather, it dramatically reduces the NF-kappa induced inflammation that effects all diseases. If this is true, and I'm personally convinced that it is, it means that we will be able to delay or prevent most of the conditions that prematurely shorten life.
I won't tell you how much longer I think we'll live, because you wouldn't believe. I will say, however, that the impacts, both positive and negative, on programs such as Social Security and health care as well as the medical, housing insurance and other industries will be “unbelievable.”
Incidentally, scientific validation for this unregulated nutraceutical comes at the perfect time. The public is losing faith in old-school pharmaceuticals while regulatory hurdles increase the cost of new drugs. Anatabloc is the first and most “unbelievable” nutraceutical yet but I see other scientifically valid natural products coming.
One nutraceutical I'm very excited about is nicotinomide riboside or Vitamin NR, a superior form of niacin developed by Cornell and Duke Universities and licensed by ChromaDex (CDXC.OB). NR has profound implications for mitochondrial function, cholesterol, fat loss and nerve health. It appears to me that it would work synergistically with anatabine citrate, Anatabloc. Hopefully, we will have data within the year.
GLTA.
A.H
