Archive for the ‘Scott's Opinion’ Category

The joint meeting of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplantation Association (IPITA) and the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA) has ended in Venice, Italy. This is the first overseas meeting the Cerco Medical team has attended in a long time. We renewed acquaintances with friends and colleagues in the field and learned the latest results.

To misquote Dave Eggars, “Prospects in Diabetes Therapy” is a heartwarming work of staggering genius. I was young, living in New York, working at a smart investment banking firm called F. Eberstadt & Co. (which, weirdly, had taken my father’s company public during the depression), and living in the delightful wide-open space of having become the first investment analyst of a new and hot industry, biotechnology. I remember my boss, Dick Emmitt, told me the company liked my initial work, and now I could pick my own topic for a report. I had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes less then two years previous. I told him I wanted to find out the future of diabetes therapy. He liked it – no one had investigated investment opportunities in the diabetes industry – and I was given a few months to do the research.

With wearying frequency come press releases announcing that a new approach has cured diabetes in animals and that the human cure is only a few years away. With equal frequency most such reports turn out to be wrong. So why don’t animal results predict what all diabetics hope for?

Yesterday I met with a prominent leader of San Francisco’s Investment Community, and a longtime supporter of T1D research. We were talking about our work to solve diabetes with the Islet Sheet, and naturally the conversation turned to the multiple ventures that have been formed to cure diabetes with encapsulated islets and had attracted speculative investment (including one he and I had been involved with). I said that a big reason no one would invest in our company was the failure of all these companies; and that I have recently added up the total invested and lost, and it was about a third of a trillion dollars. He stared at me for a time and finally said, “that’s a number I’m going to write down.”