In the 1770s Italian physician and physicist Luigi Galvani shocked the world with the discovery that a spark could cause a dead frog’s legs to twitch.

In 1802, German chemist Johann Wilhelm Ritter furthered Galvani’s research into electrophysiology. He observed how halting a strong current in muscle nerves could cause a muscle to contract.

Electricity as a medical therapy became a high-voltage field of interest. By the late 1800s, scientific literature described how electrical pulses could kill bacteria in river water or change the shape and color of red blood cells. Luminaries, such as Nikola Tesla, pioneered experiments and patented electrotherapeutic equipment.

Although electricity’s effect on the body had long been studied by the middle of the 20th century, many of the mechanisms were not yet known. In the 1950s, however, this began to change. For example, in 1951 Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine Alan Lloyd Hodgkin theorized that the breakdown of a cell’s “skin” was at the root of many of electricity’s observed effects.

Hodgkin believed cellular membranes were electrically insulating layers, and that strong electricity caused pores to permanently open. Irreversibly opening pores made cells break apart and die. The phenomenon was dubbed electroporation, from the words “electric” and “pore.”

However, more experiments by other researchers eventually showed that irreversible electroporation wasn’t always the outcome of passing electricity through cells. Cellular pores are electrically charged gates. If pulses of electrical energy are sufficiently low and brief, existing gates open only temporarily. These cells don’t die, but this effect can still be useful. With electroporation, the ability of cellular membranes to keep a tight seal to the outside world can be manipulated for short periods of time.

As it turns out, the discovery of reversible electroporation revolutionized biotechnology research. Cracking open a cell’s pores allows researchers to get stuff into cells they weren’t able to before. By the 1980s, thanks to reversible electroporation, researchers were able to modify genes in everything from mouse cells to bacteria.

Today, electroporation equipment is a standard appliance in research labs. These devices, called electroporators, are used to create things like “knockout mice” — organisms with genes modified to study everything from cancer compounds to Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, many of the new wonder drugs are biologics, which means they are produced by living organisms. Biologics often depend on the use of electroporation to create genetically modified cell lines to manufacture complex therapeutic proteins.

Up until recently electroporation has been limited to the lab. It is something used to introduce molecules that normally won’t be absorbed by cells while in culture. But that has changed…

Today this same technology is being applied for the treatment of cancer in living organisms — humans, to be exact…

You may already be familiar with some of this technology. I’ve been writing about it for some time.

Therapeutic engineered DNA molecules, known as plasmids, are an exciting, maturing platform for treating disease.

Plasmids are small rings of DNA that are used to turn cells into custom protein manufacturing plants. Once introduced into a cell, these genetic code constructs act like native DNA: they guide the production of proteins. This can include therapeutic proteins. The downside of DNA plasmids as agents to cure disease, however, is that they don’t migrate into a cell’s interior very well, if at all.

Electroporation solves the problem of DNA delivery. It has been used for this job in labs for decades. It can increase the ability of molecules like DNA to enter cells by 1,000 times or more.

Electroporation drug delivery can be used for far more than DNA vaccines. It can be used to deliver DNA designed for other purposes, as well as for improving the uptake of therapeutic molecules that are already on the market…

One use of gene therapies involves injecting directly into tumors.

This focuses on writing the code for these naturally occurring anti-cancer agents in its DNA plasmids, and then introduces them into tumor cells via electroporation.

Normally, the immune system works to seek and destroy cells that develop mutations. Sometimes, however, mutated cells develop the ability to defend themselves by hiding from the immune system. Alerting the immune system with these signaling proteins allows the immune system to recognize cancer cells and triggers a cascade reaction to destroy them.

Early investors in the technology will be on track to reap rich rewards from breakthrough electroporation platforms… it addresses a huge market.

Regards,

Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning

An Electrifying Biotechnology – A Shot at Shocking Profits originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

Clearly, this is good news both for humanity in general and investors specifically. However, these changes will be, by definition, enormously disruptive. As is always the case when big changes create new winners and dethrone the old ones. How big will these changes be?

Consider the fact that already, life extension is our No. 1 public-policy challenge. It is, in fact, the root cause of our current mortgage and debt fiascos — both only symptoms of successful life-extending technologies. The technologies that have precipitated these crises, however, will soon be overshadowed by the wave of revolutionary biotech innovation.

Even those who have no personal interest in life-extension strategies, beyond those supplied by conventional medical networks, will have to deal with the social and economic problems they cause. Our lives will be profoundly affected by emerging biotechnologies that will push maximum healthy life spans up much faster and further than ever before.

Typically, when I say that life extension brings problems, the default assumption is that I’m referring to traditional fears of resource depletion and overpopulation. I’m not.

There’s not room here to deal with the Malthusian impulse. Nor, however, do I feel as if I need to. Innovation has never yet failed to find solutions to changing resource challenges, as our current situation testifies. Obesity, not starvation, is for the first time in history mankind’s major challenge. Peak Oil has proven yet another overblown panic attack, as will various other resource fears — unless they are enforced via regulatory agencies. Current drug shortages, caused in large part by government price controls and regulatory morass, offer a good example.

Likewise, the fallacy of overpopulation fears was clear as far back as 1929, when demographer Warren Thompson observed that the transition from preindustrial to industrial economies was inevitably accompanied by significantly lower birth and death rates. Lower birth rates were a matter of choice, given lower infant mortality. Longer lives came from science and capitalism. The life-extension technologies they delivered included clean water, infrastructure and improved agricultural productivity. Medical and nutritional discoveries also contributed.

As was predicted by rational demographers, two direct consequences ensued from the demographic transition: shrinking younger populations and growing aged populations. Nevertheless, Warren’s predictions were largely ignored until very recently. The assumption of continually growing populations persisted long after the actual trends had reversed. As a result, serious policy errors were made based on assumptions of permanently increasing demand for both housing and education. The resultant housing bubble has already collapsed. The education bubble has not yet burst, but it’s quivering.

Though we’ve not yet seen the inevitable magazine covers trumpeting the depopulation apocalypse, there’s been a sort of intellectual sea change. Decades of overpopulation horror stories are quietly being taken off the shelves, replaced by other cataclysmic boogeymen.

While Al Gore and few other stalwarts are still calling for population controls, policymakers increasingly recognize low fertility rates are the real problem facing the West. One meaningful example came in a 2000 UN report titled Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Aging Populations? Though the United Nations has long supported efforts to lower birth rates, the authors admitted that the demographic transition threatens the West’s economic health and the ability to care for elderly populations.

While US birth rates have dipped recently, as they usually do during periods of economic distress, there are reasons to believe that the United States may escape depopulation when the economy improves, based on recent population figures. Even so, new life-extension technologies will nevertheless result in a much-higher ration of older to younger people.

Thus far, the current debt and entitlement crises, domestic and international, are only a few consequences of increasing life spans. Without a major rethinking of society’s core spending programs, the dynamic that created our already unsustainable debt loads is going to worsen as life spans head up the hockey stick.

To be clear, there is nothing about longer lives that is inherently adverse. Personally, I’m completely in favor of much longer health spans. Rather, the problem has been the failure to recognize and adjust to accelerating increases in life expectancies. This failure has led to ballooning expenditures and unsustainable debt. I should clarify and restate this thesis: Obsolete actuarial tables and expectations about the length and cost of retirement, especially on the medical cost front, are the proximate causes of the international fiscal meltdown.

Though many people portray the crisis as ideological, especially if their proposed solution is raising taxes, it’s actually about math. And it’s pretty simple math at that. The working young, who have always paid a disproportionate portion of the retirement and medical costs of the older and generally wealthier population, cannot bear that load in a demographically transforming world. Three basic solutions have been proposed.

Recently, in fact, the IMF published research that validates my position — that governments have utterly failed to adjust to accelerating increases in life spans. You can access the most-relevant data here, but the first few paragraphs should be required reading for anyone with pretensions of making good public policy.

Keep in mind that this study completely fails to recognize the accelerating aspect of increases in life spans. While it does point out, indirectly, that we are headed for a demographically driven financial catastrophe, it addresses only the current gap between actual needs and plans to meet those needs. In reality, new biotechnologies are going to catapult life spans so far beyond their current state; it is impossible to deal with the added costs of the aged without radical restructuring of expectations and institutions. A lot of the old assumptions and practices are going to perish. They have to, in fact, to allow society to adjust to very different conditions.

I’ve often pointed to the Great Depression as the era, historically, of the greatest innovation and investor opportunity. We are now in a period of far greater innovation and far greater investor opportunity. Yes, there’s smoke in the air and fires in the distance, but the flames are clearing the fields for new growth.

Regards,

Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning

Catastrophically Successful Life Extension originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

The words above were penned 70 years ago by an economist named Joseph Schumpeter in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. In that book, Schumpeter describes how transformational innovation disrupts the businesses of established market players in a capitalist economy.

Of course, our own legal framework serves to protect innovations made by existing companies. Enshrined in the US Constitution is the authority granted to Congress to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Often called the “Copyright and Patent Clause,” the patent protections granted are time limited. The inventor enjoys a period of virtual monopoly, and then anyone else can use the technology described in the patent. If the inventor, however, fails to engage in new patent-protected innovation, the business is at risk of falling apart after the term comes to an end.

This is what’s happening in the pharmaceutical industry today — but on steroids. Big Pharma is in Big Trouble. Many of its most-popular and profitable medicines are nearing the end of their patent-protection periods. As blockbusters begin to face competition from generics, Big Pharma stands to lose billions of dollars in yearly revenue. At the same time, shrinking in-house pipelines mean that Big Pharma won’t have the new product sales to replace what it will lose to generics. The industry is turning to partnerships and acquisitions of small biotechnology companies to plug the innovation gap.

It will take a great many new products to make up for the ones being lost, however. Just this past November, for example, Pfizer’s cholesterol-fighting drug Lipitor fell off the dreaded “patent cliff.” As the world’s top-selling drug, and with annual sales north of $10 billion, Lipitor accounts for more than 10% of the world’s largest pharmaceutical’s revenues. To make matters worse, on the same day that Lipitor lost patent protection, Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Laboratories was cleared by the FDA to market a generic clone.

Lipitor, however, is just the beginning of Big Pharma’s woes. The second-biggest drug on the market, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s blood thinner, Plavix, is scheduled to go into generic status in 2012. More than a third of BMY’s sales are tied to Plavix.

Other multibillion-dollar sellers — such as Forest Laboratories’ antidepressant Lexapro, AstraZeneca’s anti-psychotic Seroquel and Merck’s asthma drug Singulair — also have a date with doom in 2012. All told, of the world’s top 20 drugs by sales, seven will go into generic status. By 2015, an estimated quarter-trillion dollars in sales of patent-protected drugs will be at risk of competition from chemically equivalent generic compounds.

All other factors being equal, generic competition reduces prices. For the millions of patients dependent on these drugs for their health, steep price drops make prescription drugs more affordable. This is a natural outcome stemming from an end to monopoly status.

Generic competition to these drugs will enjoy strong sales through government health care programs looking to cut costs. We are already seeing aggressive cost-cutting measures to reduce what these programs have to pay to provide beneficiaries with drug coverage.

Millions of Americans will begin receiving coverage under the provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act over the next few years. Add the millions of boomers entering retirement age, and the generic drug business will boom as well.

Regards,

Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning

The Generic Drug Boom originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

The SEC and the IRS are only the beginning of the story…

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration determines what can legally be sold. It even exercises control over what can be said by companies about medical therapies. Elsewhere, other regulatory authorities play similar roles.

It was not always that way, of course. Prior to the 20th century, there was virtually no regulation of medical therapies. Medical decisions were considered the domain of doctors and patients, who bore the responsibilities and risks associated with the use of any product. Even currently banned Class A drugs used for recreational purposes were available for sale without limitations.

Today, the average cost of bringing a medical product from conception to market is around $400 million, according to The Cato Institute. The time required can be as long as 10 years.

As a result, the FDA is widely considered in need of major reform, though the nature of those reforms is a matter of debate. Responding to criticisms, the FDA has implemented some programs to accelerate review procedures.

For example, Big Pharma is allowed to directly pay the costs of the process in some cases, which can result in a faster ruling. The FDA’s response to criticisms has often focused on the need for more money to accelerate reviews. Given budgetary pressures created by the financial and entitlement crises, this is unlikely. The FDA’s desire to expand oversight is, therefore, not likely to be accomplished, in the near term at least.

The FDA currently controls only the initial approval of a therapy. It does not prohibit the use of approved therapies for uses other than which they were approved, though many in the agency would clearly like to take over what is a far-less-regulated market than many believe. These unapproved, but legal, uses are referred to as off-label.

Currently, biotechs typically target applications with the highest probability of approval, knowing that a drug or device will be widely used for unapproved purposes as soon as it is available for sale. However, the FDA prohibits the advertising of uses other than those for which a therapy was approved.

The FDA has also become very aggressive policing the publication of unapproved medical information by companies that do not sell drugs. Recently, for example, the FDA sent Diamond Foods a letter stating, “your walnut products are drugs,” because the company had publicized well-documented research about the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts. Diamond was threatened with “seizure” if the company did not immediately stop educating the public to the benefits of walnuts.

The move is rife with irony, as the National Institutes of Health has lagged decades behind nutritional researchers regarding fats in general. For many years, the federal government officially endorsed the old, simplistic food-pyramid philosophy based on the notion that all fat consumption should be reduced. Researchers have shown, overwhelmingly, that most people are deficient in certain essential fats… especially omega-3s, which play an important role in reducing heart disease and other diseases.

Many consumers don’t have that understanding and could benefit from it, but the FDA frequently prevents companies from talking about the benefits of their products. This, by the way, is an example of what my dietitian wife calls regulatory “information hoarding.”

Diamond Foods, of course, quickly complied with the FDA’s ban on unapproved educational activities. However, the event highlights the tension between the agency and providers of natural products that may have health benefits.

This tension was codified in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). Sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin (D- Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the law specifically excludes naturally occurring substances, sold as dietary supplements, from the FDA approval process.

This was, in a sense, the birth of the modern American nutraceutical industry. Combining the words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical,” nutraceuticals are foods or substances derived from foods, either synthesized or purified, and sold for health benefits. In Japan, the nutraceutical market emerged in the 1980s. Today, almost half of all Japanese consume nutraceutical products. The US, however, is catching up. Drug and health food stores have long stocked a wide range of nutraceuticals.

Increasingly, even grocery stores dedicate shelf space to natural products ranging from natural vitamin supplements to electrolyte- rich sports drinks.

Furthermore, we are also seeing nutraceuticals increasingly appear in foods to promote good health. Many foods are now being fortified with health-promoting ingredients. These include cereals with added omega-3 fatty acids, fruit juices with herbal ingredients that have biochemical properties and milk with vitamin D.

Even more esoteric products are sold in GNC and sports-oriented supplement stores. While many products may have little or no real value, it’s also clear that some have powerful biological effects.

One such product is creatine, 2-(methylguanidino) ethanoic acid. Creatine is a nitrogenous organic acid that occurs naturally in vertebrates, thus qualifying the product for nutraceutical status. It helps supply energy to all cells in the body, though most users are probably primarily interested in its effects on muscle cells…

Creatine increases the formation of adenosine triphosphate, which transports chemical energy within cells. The result for many, especially those who do not eat a great deal of meat, is increased muscle mass and anaerobic strength. For that reason, creatine is widely and legally used as a supplement by athletes who rely on strength, as opposed to aerobic abilities.

Creatine is the subject of scientific inquiry for other reasons as well. There is some evidence that it assists in muscle-damage repair experienced during intense training. One study has demonstrated increased cognitive abilities in humans, and animal studies point to potential in the treatment of ALS and Huntington’s disease. Some people are taking creatine for those reasons, but because it is a nutraceutical, manufacturers cannot publish any such possible benefits. To get permission to do so would cost many millions of dollars.

Today, the US nutraceutical market is worth approximately $87 billion in sales, but is expanding rapidly.

There are many reasons for this growth.

In part, the nutraceutical movement is an expression of the widespread desire to take control and responsibility for one’s own health in an increasingly impersonal and bureaucratized health care system. As such, the current state of the nutraceutical industry is very similar to the pharmaceutical market in the 22-year period between the institution of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Government can monitor for purity and certain aspects of commercial speech, but not much else. Though this was not planned, this minimal regulation has actually increased public confidence in nutraceuticals.

Moreover, public perception of nutraceuticals is changing as more and more validated therapies appear. This is certainly my experience. Not that long ago, the health food store industry offered little of real benefit except basic dietary nutrients. More often than not, natural products were ineffective placebos at best, and harmful at worst. This has changed, and this change will accelerate for one reason — exponential growth in science, powered in large part by rapid improvements in information technology.

Given the frustrations of those who feel, often rightly, that they have been prevented from bringing important drug therapies to market because of onerous regulatory hurdles, it was predictable that many innovators and entrepreneurs would turn to nutraceuticals as an avenue of exploration. In this endeavor, there have been notable successes that have changed the face of biotech.

Serious scientists are applying the latest and most-sophisticated technologies to the uncountable natural molecules that exist in our biosphere.

Bioinformatics, molecular biology and nutrigenomics are contributing to this new field outside the bureaucratic hand of the regulators — with all the opportunities and risks that it implies. You do not want to ignore companies best positioned to profit from this disruptive revolution…

Regards,

Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning

The “Shadow Pharmaceutical” Sector originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

Today, the disease is found throughout the world because of migrations from these regions.

Ordinarily, red blood cells have a doughnut-like shape. Individuals with the sickle cell trait, however, also have red blood cells that assume a crescent shape. This sickle cell’s shape confers resistance to the malaria parasite, plasmodium falciparum, which infects red blood cells.

Although the genetic mutation that causes sickle-shaped red blood cells helps people survive in regions plagued by malaria-carrying mosquitoes, it comes at a high price…

In individuals that carry two copies of the gene, for example, anemia is common, since the mutation reduces the ability of red blood cells to transport oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body. This condition is called sickle cell disease (SCD).

However, on a purely physical level, sickle-shaped red blood cells can cause other problems as well. Since they aren’t as round as normal red blood cells, they don’t flow as well through the 60,000 miles of small, serpentine blood vessels that carry life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients to the body.

Normally, the percentage of sickle-shaped cells is low enough that this isn’t a big problem.

When the percentage of affected red blood cells in the body is high enough, however, a vaso-occlusive crisis can occur. When there are too many sickle-shaped red blood cells in the body, they clog in narrow capillaries like logs in a river bend. This occlusion in the blood vessels restricts blood supply to tissues, and can lead to pain and the death of cells in the affected areas.

The early symptoms are an imminent, looming pain in the body, much like the early stages of a flu infection. The pain eventually builds, and patients commonly describe it as being repeatedly hit with a baseball bat in the same place.

Female sufferers describe the pain as worse than childbirth.

In the United States alone, some 90,000 people are affected by SCD. It is most commonly found in people of African or Hispanic ancestry. In the US, 150,000 hospitalizations and ER visits are attributed to an SCD-caused crisis each year.

Patients suffering a crisis are administered intravenous narcotics and kept hydrated. They are monitored until the condition clears and then they are sent home. Typical hospital stays range from four-six days, but they can last up to two weeks. Other than waiting for the clogged blood cells to break down while administering analgesics to deal with the extreme pain, there are no good options to deal with the effects of an acute SCD condition. Extreme cases can cause death.

Even if it doesn’t kill immediately, SCD-caused crisis eventually shortens the life span of otherwise healthy people. Frequent clogging of blood flow can lead to early organ failure and death. A 1994 study, for example, showed the median age of death for SCD sufferers in the US at 42 years for males, and 48 for females.

However, what if there were a way to help blood flow better in patients experiencing this condition? Not only could the duration of a crisis be reduced, but the amount of damage that one could cause would be reduced as well.

Regards,

Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning

Solving the Sickle Cell Crisis originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

We tend not to think about it, but the single-cell microorganisms categorized as bacteria are the dominant life form on Earth. In some mathematical sense, this is their planet and we just use it.

Their total biomass, after all, is greater than that of all living plants and animals combined. Bacteria inhabit the planet from the highest peaks to the deepest depths of the ocean. There are typically 40 million bacteria in one gram of soil and a million in a milliliter of fresh water. In our bodies, bacteria outnumber human cells 10 to one.

Besides making extremely useful things possible, including Rioja wines, single-malt scotches and the Earth’s biosphere, bacteria can also cause serious problems. Bacterial infection, in fact, may be the single largest killer in America today.

However, we don’t hear about a bacterial plague for several reasons…

One is that some pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or a virus-borne disease, often create the conditions that lead to an opportunistic bacterial infection. So statisticians tend to categorize deaths according to the condition that led to the lethal infection that actually killed the patient.

Also, I suspect that the medical profession doesn’t like to talk about the danger of infections that are often acquired in hospitals, though I may be too cynical.

Regardless, some estimates are that bacteria cause, in the US alone, over 14 million skin and soft tissue infections, and 7 million methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) cases, annually. Of those infections, 70% are resistant to at least one antibiotic.

Moreover, resistance is growing due to natural evolutionary mechanisms as well as the misuse and overprescription of antibiotics.

Just a few weeks ago, the world medical community suffered a serious scare when an Indian clinic announced it had a dozen patients with highly contagious tuberculosis resistant to all known antibiotics. A totally untreatable TB could, in fact, easily kill hundreds of millions and send Western economies into a long depression.

Fortunately, the announcement was false. A therapy was found and the epidemic prevented.

Still, the trend lines are clear, and public perception of this threat is growing.

There are companies, however, that continue to make serious progress in the goal of creating new and effective antibiotics that bacteria could not adapt to.

With a $10 billion market that is rapidly growing, the potential rewards are stratospheric. Investors would be wise to pay attention to companies working to create new effective antibiotics…

As concern over the fading effectiveness of antibiotics grows, investor attention will turn to the few companies working on solutions. Now is the time to act… before everyone else does.

Regards,

Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning

Antibiotics, the Next Generation! originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

Briefly, galectins-3s are proteins that have the ability to recognize and attach themselves to specific sugar molecules. This sugar-binding characteristic is typical of all lectins and is essential to our bodies’ functioning, but galectin-3s, for some reason, are also involved in all manner of disorders. Galectin-3s are integrally involved in strokes, heart disease, cancers, inflammation and fibrosis in its many health-destroying forms.

One of the bad things that galectin-3s does is attach to T-cells. T-cells are the white blood cells or lymphocytes that fight disease and communicate information about threats to the immune system.

The “T” in T-cells, by the way, stands for thymus. That’s because T-cells are born in your bone marrow but then migrate to the heart-shaped thymus, located behind the sternum in the center of your chest. There, they mature and are programmed for specific purposes.

This programming is based in part on information about any disease in your body that is contained in the thymus. That information is relayed to the thymus by other T-cells that circulate through your body. This complex information transfer process is not static. It evolves as the body tests different approaches to fighting threats.

In theory, this thymus-regulated immune process should be able to deal easily with cancers. Unfortunately, cancers can escape routine detection and destruction by T-cells by making a deadly fog or shield of galectin-3s. They attach to the T-cells that approach the cancer, triggering cell suicide in the cancer-fighting lymphocytes. As a result, the T-cells are prevented from doing battle with the cancer cells and cannot report back to the thymus. The cancer, in turn, evolves like a malignant intelligence — hidden behind the galectin-3 death fog.

The Ludwig Institute, the world’s largest and one of the most respected cancer research organizations, tested one of these carbohydrate drugs in cultures of cancer cells mixed with T-cells. As expected, the cancer cells quickly shut down the T-cells with galectin-3s. Into this mix of doomed T-cells and cancer cells, the galectin-3 blocking drug was added. Immediately, the T-cells were rejuvenated and began killing cancers.

Cancer vaccine therapies are one of the hottest areas of biotech research today. At least a hundred organizations, I hear, are currently looking for vaccination therapies that train T-cells to more effectively fight cancers. This is only logical, since prior anti-cancer therapies have been, by definition, toxic. Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy harm the patient. The trick is to harm the cancer more, but it is not an optimal solution. Prior to new approaches to cancer, the best possible scenario was to reduce side effects and damage. In fact, the drug in question does that, but the industry is far more interested in nontoxic approaches to fighting cancer.

Ludwig, for example, is investing in clinical trials because they believe, as I do, that the immune system, and therefore vaccines, will work far better when T-cells are protected from galectin-3s. If it works with Ludwig’s particular vaccine, however, it will work with any cancer vaccine. This opens up a vast market.

The important thing to keep in mind regarding this trial is that the galectin-3 blocker would improve the vaccine result even if it didn’t actually interact with the immune process to increase the vaccine’s efficacy. Through the course of my research, I’ve learned that cell culture tests showed that this drug resurrected T-cells so that they killed cancers.

This means that the drug on its own could be a very potent cancer killer. I predict that it will be, in fact. Given periodically, I believe it will work prophylactically to prevent cancers.

Regards,

Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning

Outwitting Cancer’s “Deadly Fog” originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

It is their explanation for why things go wrong, however, that I find most illuminating. Both Schumpeter and Sowell write about “intellectuals” who have academic credentials of some sort but are lacking in knowledge that would make them particularly valuable to the market. Incapable of commanding significant wealth and status through voluntary market mechanisms, these intellectuals resent the wealth of more-successful people. As a result, they envy and resent the entire market system that has failed to reward them as they believe they deserve to be rewarded.

Others have also explored this theme. Another Austrian, Helmut Schoeck, wrote the book that is widely considered a masterpiece of sociology, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (Der Neid: Eine Theorie der Gesellschaft). You can go back even further, if you like, to the Tenth Commandment’s proscription against “coveting.”

Intellectuals who consider inequalities in wealth evidence of injustice often seek political remedies. These take the form of legislation and, more often, regulation. In the process, of course, they are able to portray themselves as heroic opponents of injustice. If they have sufficient support, they are also able to acquire significant power, wealth and status. We know from experience, however, that these intellectuals rarely consider their own wealth evidence of injustice.

In Europe, these intellectuals have been far more successful in the past than in America. For this reason, American intellectuals in academia, politics and media have for decades told us that the US is woefully unsophisticated and behind the times. In fact, economists have shown consistently that quality of life is higher for Americans at all income levels than it is in most European nations. It is difficult, however, to compete with a movement that has had, until recently, a near monopoly on pulpits, podiums and programming.

That’s all changed. Not only has the United States seen Keynesian policies on steroids crash and burn, but the European model has been revealed as the house of cards that it is. For decades, governments have propped up living standards by borrowing to appease voters. In effect, nations have consumed at artificially high levels by sending their children the bill.

Naturally, governments run by these intellectuals have tried to raise taxes to support their habits. Many succeeded, but then discovered the reality of the Laffer curve. Taxes necessarily transfer resources from the private tax-generating sector to the public tax-consuming sector. At some point, taxes depress economic growth, which reduces government revenues. This point is usually much lower than the critics of capitalism assume. Moreover, their targeting of the wealthiest individuals is most damaging to the economy. The wealthiest are also those with the most money to invest in the innovations that create all net new jobs.

So we’re seeing tax recipients rioting in Greece and elsewhere. These riots will spread, but it will do no good. The money doesn’t exist to support the intellectuals’ schemes, no matter how bloody their tantrums. Times will get hard enough to create a generation that hates the intellectuals who promised that everybody would be able to retire young with no worries.

We are in the midst of a historic transition. The intellectuals got their way. Now the consequences of their ideologies are going to be painful enough to allow market reforms. That’s how self-equilibrating market mechanisms work.

This is all very good news for North Americans. Canada, by the way, is way ahead of America in learning the limitations of government. America, however, is learning quickly.

Three years ago, the intellectuals were gloating that they could use the forthcoming economic downturn for their advantage. The public, they predicted, would blame free markets and give even more power to the planners.

That, as you know, has not happened. Despite the orchestrated efforts of the Occupy Wall Street crowd and other fans of socialism, the American public is far more wary of government than it is of business:

An overwhelming 64% of people surveyed said big government was the biggest threat to the country, compared with just 26% who said big business is their gravest concern and 8% who picked big labor.

Government debt schemes are failing. This is creating remarkable opportunities for investors. It amazes me, in fact, that more people don’t understand this.

On those rare occasions when I watch financial shows, I’m always surprised by the never-questioned assumption that up-markets are good and down-markets are bad. This is nonsense.

The name of the game for investors is “Buy low, sell high.” Given the inevitable fluctuations of the market, we know that markets have always gone through this sort of big cycle. They always will.

If this were not the case, “Buy low, sell high” would be nearly impossible. Sure, selling high is more fun, but you can’t do it if you haven’t bought low. This seems awfully obvious to me, but it’s clear that most people just don’t get it.

We are at an incredible historic juncture. The world is, once again, realizing it has been duped by fast-talking political scam artists. This is not a new story. In fact, we’ve actually gotten off pretty easy this time. By necessity, market-killing programs will be cut back, freeing investors and innovators to create wealth once again. This liberation of capital will come just as the greatest scientific revolution in history swings into high gear, delivering extended healthy life spans and new levels of wealth. I know it doesn’t always feel like it, but these are wonderful, extraordinary times.

Someday, some younger investor is going to say something to you like this: “You were so lucky to be investing back then, when prices were at rock bottom but the whole world was changing for the better. I’d be rich too if I were investing in those days.”

In fact, they will probably be wrong. Most people never see the big picture while it’s happening. This type of once-in-a-lifetime situation is always easy to see in hindsight. When you’re living through it, though, it takes real character and vision to grasp the opportunities.

Regards,

Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning

The Folly of Intellectuals originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

Imagine! Not a single one of them mentioned Ashton Kutcher’s break-up with Demi Moore.

Anatabloc is a dietary supplement for anti-inflammatory support of the immune system. Since many disorders, like coronary artery disease, diabetes, asthma, Alzheimer’s, and rheumatoid arthritis, are caused by chronic low-level inflammation, Anatabloc is a potential preventative treatment for these diseases.

Not coincidentally, those friends at the party who did not rank the emergence of Anatabloc as one of the most important events of the year are younger, not yet suffering from the inflammation-related medical conditions that set in during middle age. Some of them take Anatabloc anyway because it is a safe monoamine oxidase inhibitor, or MAOI. MAOIs are antidepressants that aid in focusing and task accomplishment. The term “MAOI,” by the way, is often pronounced like the Hawaiian island of Maui.

I’ve seen emails from a number of my subscribers who report similar dramatic improvements in inflammation-related conditions. Typically, I also hear that they have started giving Anatabloc to friends and family, who also report improvements in inflammatory conditions. Then the cycle repeats.

For older men, one of the most commonly reported impacts of Anatabloc is improvement in urinary tract or prostate problems. As men age, inflammation of the prostate leads to reduced bladder capacity, which is more than an inconvenience. Not only do prostate problems interfere with sleep, requiring multiple trips to the bathroom at night, but they usually precede prostate cancer.

Not coincidentally, recent research shows that statins are associated with reduced risk of prostate cancer. The reason, I think, is intuitively obvious. If the cells of an organ — whether it is the prostate or the thyroid — are swollen, they are not functioning as they should. Moreover, they become the targets of the immune system’s inflammatory axis, which worsens cell health. In time, this vicious circle cascades to the point of organ damage, failure or cancer.

This is important because the anti-inflammatory effects of Anatabloc have been shown by the Roskamp Institute to be greater than the leading statin, Lipitor. The name of the study is, “Statin Use and Fatal Prostate Cancer.”

Moreover, the world-class scientists who are researching anatabine citrate continue to speak regularly to large numbers of health professionals at scientific conferences as well as less-formal events. Here, by the way, is a summary of the important research done at the Roskamp Institute.

It is not chance that Anatabloc is arriving outside the realm of FDA control. The FDA was set up to minimize patient risk from new therapies — even though it slows access to newer and more-effective therapies. This institutional wet blanket has motivated many brilliant scientists and innovators to look for effective compounds in nature, which is unregulated by the FDA.

Anatabloc, therefore, illustrates one of the most poignant ironies of our time. On the one hand, we are seeing the inevitable collapse of utopian political fantasies implemented in capitals ranging from Sacramento, Calif., to Madrid, Spain. On the other hand, we are witnessing astonishing breakthroughs that are actually being accelerated by the downfall of out-of-control government.

Anatabine citrate is only one such breakthrough, but you shouldn’t underestimate it. The reduction in inflammation-related illness will not only deliver dramatic improvements in the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people, but will change our entire demographic picture.

Anatabloc, by the way, will not be the last disruptive and lucrative therapy to come from the application of modern scientific investigative technologies to the uncountable molecules that exist in our biological biosphere. In the past, I’ve been a relentless debunker of so-called natural products. This is due to widespread quackery in the natural-products industry.

That, however, has changed. There are just as many scams as ever being sold in health food stores, but true innovations like Anatabloc are also arriving. Most are still generally unknown to the public, but in the next few months, I’m going to be telling you about additional breakthroughs in this field.

So don’t be discouraged by the “directionless” financial markets. Instead, pay attention to the astonishing number of revolutionary scientific and technological breakthroughs that are coming our way.

As these breakthroughs dramatically improve many aspects of our lives, they will also provide “life-changing” investment opportunities.

Regards,

Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning

A “Nutraceutical” Game-Changer originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

We were also able to talk to executives, scientists and engineers at many cutting-edge technology company. Without a doubt, the hottest topics and most-dazzling presentations at CES this year involved televisions. When I say television, though, I’m talking about an entirely new iteration of the old technology.

“Smart televisions” are finally becoming truly user-friendly. Moreover, the various online sources of content are being knit together by Google and hardware manufacturers. This convergence of all content on the wirelessly connected family screen presents an enormous challenge to traditional broadcast and cable networks. Games, educational materials, entertainment, telephony and home electronics management are coming together. When you can interact with Khan Academy lectures on virtually any subject, the term “boob tube” hardly applies. Here’s one article about this important trend.

In the past, I’ve never gotten particularly excited by HD television. Yes, new HD large-screen televisions have been improvements, but I’ve never found them particularly compelling. I think that’s about to change.

New screen technologies, OLED and active matrix, have crossed some tipping point. I was astonished by the clarity of next-generation screens. The Korean manufacturers, in particular, can make screens with clarity that is getting very close to actual vision. This is particularly true in regard to 3-D screen technology.

I told my subscribers several years ago that entertainment as we knew it would change when 3-D screens reached an acceptable level. That point will not come at once, because individuals have different preferences, but for many, it has already arrived, even though the highest-quality screens still require glasses. That will change within a few years. 3-D televisions are in the works now that will allow a room full of people to each receive, without glasses, both left and right eye signals — even if they move around.

The big events of the CES were all about 3-D, especially the live broadcasts by the ESPN 3-D channel. Fortunately, I know some of the key people at Cameron Pace Group, the company that owns the state-of-the-art technology used to shoot and broadcast most top-level 3-D. Cameron Pace is run by James Cameron of Avatar fame as well as Vince Pace, the inventor of the technology and a well-known cinematographer. As a result, Ray and I were able to go behind the scenes inside the semitrailers outside the convention hall that powered the 3-D broadcast.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this company right now, but I will in the future. A lot of 3-D photography is happening right now, even though the forum doesn’t yet exist for the programming. When 3-D screens are more widely deployed, you’re going to be surprised to find that many of the most-successful shows on television today will then be released, for a second revenue stream, in 3-D.

Regards,

Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning

Coming Soon: Smart Television! originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".