Currently, medicine is, to a large degree, a “one size fits all” proposition. Doctors watch for adverse effects and check personal and family histories. Medical technologies, however, are designed for the general population, not individuals.

That’s going to change…

The Problem With the “Normal Curve”

We know that many current treatments work on some people, yet not others. Some drugs are safe for many people, but have dangerous side effects for others. This is because all of us have individual differences in our genetic code based on heredity and environment. Even slight differences can lead to very different reactions to medications.

This has created serious regulatory problems. Drugs are denied regulatory approval not because they do not work, but because some fraction of the population suffers adverse effects. As a result, we are often denied incredibly effective therapies simply because they are not universally effective.

This shockingly primitive state of affairs exists because, until very lately, we simply have not had the tools to get to the genetic roots of disease. Scientists and pharmaceutical companies haven’t precisely known how a particular drug’s chemical profile interacts with a genetic one. Medical science, in turn, has been unable to tailor drugs to work with a specific genetic makeup.

The Impact of the Genome

This is rapidly changing. Just a few short years ago, the human genome was first mapped. The genome, as you know, is the entire collection of genetic code that defines us at a biological level. Now scientists are studying single genes and their individual expressions.

It is meaningful, from the investor’s perspective, that Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, has just been selected by the Obama administration to head up the National Institutes of Health. Collins has long been a prominent champion for using the knowledge gained from human genome to accelerate personalized medicine. 

This is important because institutional forces, with lobbying clout, always resist change. Much of Big Pharm, and its regulators, are vested in the “one size fits all” model. Many of the old players fear personalized medicine because it threatens the existing hierarchy. Collins’ presence at the top of the NIH will help counter this institutional resistance.

Incidentally, Collins has stated that genomics is currently where the computer industry was back in the 1970s – at the beginning of a technological revolution. While he was speaking in scientific terms, we should remember that the ’70s was also the right time to begin investing in a diversified portfolio of breakthrough computer technologies. Those who did so, despite claims that it was too risky or early, were made rich.

Dr. Collins is not alone in his views about personalized medicine. Former FDA director under G.W. Bush Dr. Andrew Von Eschenbach urges that the FDA approval process be overhauled and streamlined to help accelerate the adoption of personalized medicine. He is on record predicting that the medical industry will, in fact, undergo this profound metamorphosis.

For transformational profits,
Patrick Cox

How to Make a Fortune From the Personalized Medicine Revolution was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Currently, most applications simply integrate superior nanotech materials into existing products. Carbon allotropes are used to produce gecko tape. Antibacterial nano-silver is used in clothing, food packaging, disinfectants and household appliances. Nano-sized cerium oxide is employed as a fuel catalyst. Increasingly sophisticated products are appearing at the rate of two-four per week.

This month, we’re going to invest in 33 nanotech companies. Almost all are pre-IPO privately held startups. And we’ll do it in one step while retaining complete liquidity.

In the process, I’ll describe how one company is altering the DNA of viruses to attack cancers. I’ll also talk about a company that gets oils from algae. Another company that we’ll be adding to our portfolio is the leading contender in the race to make your current computer as obsolete as an abacus.

It’s Time to Get into the VC Business

One of the greatest frustrations about this job is coming across fantastic startups that I can’t add to the portfolio. I’ve written at length about a few of these pre-IPO companies with enormous, nearly inevitable returns. There are many more, in fact, that I haven’t mentioned. As a result, I truly envy venture capitalists. For some time, I’ve been fantasizing about a breakthrough technology venture capital fund. This isn’t quite that, but it’s close.

The attractions of the VC (venture capital) business are obvious. One is simply the ability to go where equity investors cannot. It irks me that VCs get to buy into obviously transformational companies when we can’t. The other reason is the rate of return enjoyed by VCs is typically so much higher than the stock market’s. I really want you to get in on the high yields earned by angel and venture capitalists.

This is why I’m so pleased to have come across our newest addition to the Breakthrough Technology Alert portfolio. Buying stock in this company allows you to participate in some of the most exciting and promising nanotech startups in existence – on better than VC terms.

This company acts as a kind of VC mutual fund, investing only in privately held early-stage breakthrough technologies. Moreover, your participation in the VC market remains liquid because you can sell the fund at any time. That’s a privilege that normal venture capitalists don’t have.

Not only does the VC fund take positions in important startups, it is actively engaged, bringing its expertise to and working side by side with the management of its portfolio companies. With its broad knowledge of the nanotech industry, the fund can help portfolio companies with general strategic and operational problems, as well as business and intellectual property strategy. It helps with executive recruiting, fundraising and compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Perhaps most importantly, it is in the position to build collaborations with strategic partners.

In the process of vetting this company, I spoke at length with the company’s CEO. I was pleased, by the way, to hear he had enjoyed reading some of our past issues of Breakthrough Technology Alert.

He took the time to explain the VC fund’s investment philosophy to my associate Ray Blanco and me. According to this CEO, the current team has grown from four to 11 members since 2002. Five have extensive VC experiences. Additionally, team members have expertise in solid-state physicists, biochemistry and other technologies that intersect and converge with nanotechnology.

This team constantly monitors the world of nanotech. Additionally, it maintains contact with nanotech scientists in academia, where much cutting-edge research is taking place. While academic research is typically too early a stage for investors, these relationships allow the fund to identify important spinoffs as they occur.

We know that the long-term promise of nanotech is world changing. The immediate challenge for nanotech investors is finding companies in the commercialization stage. As I’ve explained, we at Breakthrough Technology Alert don’t mind getting in a little early, because the eventual returns will be so high. Investors do, however, want to know that their portfolios will maintain and increase in value while waiting for those eventual huge returns. Everyone at this unique venture capital fund clearly understands this need for liquidity.

The Only Publicly Traded Liquid Nanotech VC Firm

To my knowledge, this investment is the only truly liquid nanotech venture capital company available to stock buyers. Diversification is at the heart of its investment philosophy. It generally doesn’t put more than 5% of its gross assets in any single holding.

It also maintains large cash reserves as a means of counterbalancing the inherent risk of investing in young nanotech businesses that are not yet profitable. As its CEO says, the fund offers a “diversified way to play the emergence of nanotechnology – when most of the companies are still private – in a public vehicle.”

Several of its holdings are, however, already earning significant revenues. Companies in the portfolio generated $242 million in revenue for 2008, a 22% increase over 2007. Other companies are on track to becoming revenue producers or to significantly increase revenues.

Since I recommended this unique venture capital fund to my readers last week, we’re already closing in on double-digit gains. If you want access to my full report on this stock – as well as new transformational technology stocks each month – visit the Breakthrough Technology Alert website.

Sincerely,
Patrick Cox

July 2, 2009

Earn Venture Capital Profits for Your Stock Portfolio was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Let me say first that picking APM winners is not a slam-dunk. We are at a stage in nanotech that can be very frustrating if you forget the big picture. We are tantalizingly close to seeing a swarm of startups come out with world-changing products. These products will provide investment opportunities unlike anything ever seen before. The problem, though, is that sitting on the edge of your seat can be difficult — you can jump the gun. Worse, you can lose patience and give up.

Don’t do it. The reason is that APM will not only create new opportunities, it will destroy many existing industries. Just as light bulbs and AC electrical power created huge opportunities, they razed whole sectors. Lucrative businesses crumbled, taking their investors’ fortunes with them.

Furthermore, it will happen sooner than most expect, and it will happen very quickly. Tracking APM and other transformational markets is not just a matter of making money. It is a matter of not losing money. It could even be a matter of financial survival. I promise you that many people who think they have diversified safely will find their former wealth in new hands. My goal is to make sure that you don’t wake up one morning to find that your portfolio consists of buggy whips and chemical-based photographic film.

The irony of nanotech is that we have a pretty good idea about some of the important ways APM will change our lives. There’s a surprising amount of consensus on the big vision. The intermediary steps challenge us.

The ability to use individual molecules to manufacture machines and materials will eventually make, for example, today’s supercomputers cheap and small enough to carry in your pocket. That doesn’t mean, though, that you will need one. Wireless speeds will skyrocket and we’ll all own multiple devices connected to powerful external processors and free unlimited storage.

This is not a risky prediction, because it already exists in rudimentary form. Most people don’t know it, but the equivalent of free online storage has been around for some time. Tools exist now that allow you to easily use online mail accounts as remote storage devices. Yahoo mail accounts have no limits on storage. Google’s Gmail apparently still does — but the limits are high and it’s easy to set up multiple accounts. Google has leaked plans to offer free online storage anyway.

One of the most compelling predictions about the future of nanotechnology is, in fact, very similar to the Star Trek replicator. Researchers say that, eventually, we will have desktop APM devices. With downloaded software and cheap basic raw materials in cartridges, you will be able to “print out” everything from electronics to a new suit.

These predictions may sound like science fiction, but that was what people thought about Star Trek’s personal communicators not that long ago. Today, common cell phones are smaller than the devices used on the television show. Moreover, cell phones can stream video, give navigational information and do other things Star Trek’s creators didn’t think of.

The danger in talking about nanotech in terms of science fiction, however, is that it tends to make people think of APM as something that will happen in the future. In fact, it’s happening now, and the rate of scientific progress is accelerating exponentially.

An Emerging Nanotech Materials Star

As I said earlier, we are at an uncomfortable stage right now in APM. We see the huge winners on the horizon. Closer in, we have a number of extremely promising players. We know some of them are going to use the expertise they’ve built to take advantage of the transformation opportunities that are just arriving.

For that reason, I believe it is time to start picking up the rising stars. I’m after companies that show excellence in management as well as its decisions regarding emerging markets. I’m looking for companies with substantial research funding, proven research scientists and a management team willing to walk barefoot on glass if necessary. I want undervalued companies able to survive and ride the flood of nanotech opportunities that will wash away skeptics in the next few years. Ideally, this company will not have yet landed the big contracts that drive up its stock prices, but can make its case to a cold-eyed analyst.

As I see it, one nanotech company stands out right now for this buy-and-hold strategy. It’s a company that I’ve told my Emerging Capital Report readers about already, and it’s one that there’s still time to act on. This is a scrappy, but very talented company. It could very well succeed big in this early and unpredictable nanotech market.

For transformative profits,

Patrick Cox
March 25, 2008

Nanotech Breakthrough Will Grow Millionaires Like Weeds was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

However, researchers are busily developing applications that link enormous numbers of nano-sized particles into larger structures. This has important business implications.

The University of Texas reports that a team at UT-Dallas has recently been able to “grow” sheets of carbon nanotubes at high speeds using a revolutionary process. These sheets have many remarkable properties.

They’re transparent. They’re also stronger than steel on a pound-for-pound basis.

The new process “spins out” these sheets at the rate of about 20 feet per minute. By comparison, wool is spun out commercially at the rate of roughly 60 feet per minute.

Here’s how it works: Unlike previous approaches which relied upon the dispersion of carbon nanotubes in liquids, this new approach is dry. Trillions of carbon nanotubes constantly rotate in a coordinated manner, with new ones attaching to the previous part of the sheet in a self assembling fashion.

Carbon nanotubes are theoretically one of the strongest materials known to man, and may just be the strongest possible in terms of weight-to-strength ratio. They are considered ideal for applications where weight must be minimized, yet intense stresses will be applied to the finished product.

Not only are the sheets light and strong, but they’re also very flexible.

This is particularly important in space and aircraft applications, where minimizing weight is crucial to fuel economy. In years to come, we can expect to begin seeing these sheets molded into coverings and eventually structural components of aircraft and spacecraft.

For example, much as one would wind duct tape around a pipe, a thin hollow aluminum tube could be wrapped in a sheet of carbon nanotubes until it approximates the strength of a solid steel strut. The difference is that it would do so at far less total weight.

In addition, the sheets have high electrical conductivity. They could be cut and formed into different shapes and serve as bright light emitting diodes (LED’s). LED’s are already increasingly being deployed as replacements to traditional filament based bulbs, and this will hasten the transition.

Another exciting potential use is as solar cells. Although the efficiency has apparently yet to be determined, this should offer advantages in simplicity of manufacturing process and eventually a very low cost per square foot.

A more exotic use is in making artificial muscles. The University of Texas researchers recently published an article in Science that explored how these carbon nanotubes sheets could be configured to flex without losing electrical conductivity.

Using microwave radiation, the sheets can even be welded between sheets of Plexiglas. This would enable something those of us who’ve lived in snowy and icy environments have long desired: A transparent heating element in our car windows.

Down the road, other UT researchers now envision even more exciting applications. For example, Dr. Larry Cauller, associate professor of neuroscience has tentatively determined that cells will grow on these sheets. In addition to supporting laboratory research, this might solve one of the major challenges in growing artificial organs.

It’s funny how sometimes technologies from diverse areas converge. In 2006, I had dinner in Baltimore with the CEO and lead scientific researcher of Hepalife Technologies (HPLF.OB: OTC BB), a Transformational Technologies Portfolio holding.

This scientist is quite confident that his research will lead the world’s first functioning artificial liver. They have the perfect liver cell line. It’s basically immortal, does the same job of purifying blood as human liver cells and is “well-behaved,” meaning that it will grow to cover a scaffolding and then stop growing.

So far so good. The problem, he candidly admitted, was that they haven’t yet found the ideal scaffolding material. I’m guessing that these carbon nanotubes sheets with their flexibility, biocompatibility and durability may be just the ticket.

You can be sure I’ll let them know about this breakthrough.

Multiple other possible applications have been identified, including batteries, fuel cells and even multifunctional applications in which the sheets can both store energy and provide structural reinforcement. Imagine, for example, a car battery that also serves as a roll bar.

“Rarely is a processing advance so elegantly simple that rapid commercialization seems possible, and rarely does such an advance so quickly enable diverse application demonstrations,” said the article’s corresponding author, Dr. Ray Baughman, director of the UTD NanoTech Institute.

The institute is reportedly working with some major corporations and government agencies to bring the technology forward to commercialization. I’ll be watching for small, promising companies to pick up some of these applications and run with them.

To your profitable future,
Jonathan Kolber
April 11, 2007

P.S.: Big Pharma’s biggest players are waving blank checks at this fledgling drug firm — and at YOU, if you’re holding shares… This new company’s Alzheimer’s drug sailed through FDA Phase 2 drug trials with flying colors — spurring immediate interest in either a licensing agreement or an outright buyout from one household-name drug giant.

Investing in Nanotechnology was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.