- We’re training the immune system to fight cancer…
- Air travel is ripe for disruption…
- Another twist in this CRISPR patent case…
Dear Reader,
Tonight is the night – my exclusive briefing goes live at 8 p.m. ET.
There, I’ll share my thoughts on the recent market pullback… and what we can expect from the rest of 2022.
While recent market action has concerned many investors, I have good news to share.
A certain technology trend is rapidly taking shape… and it could help investors recover from any declines they’ve seen in their portfolios during the recent volatility – plus much, much more.
In fact, I believe this trend could help us turn every $1 invested into $100.
I’ll even share the name and ticker of a free recommendation tonight… one that could be an easy double in the coming months.
So please, if you have any money in the market… or are unsure what to do with your money in 2022… don’t miss this event.
I want to guide readers through this rocky stock market that we’re all experiencing… and on to even greater profits.
Simply go right here to reserve your spot for free.
See you in a few hours!
This “living drug” could be the cure for cancer…
Scientific journal Nature just released some remarkable findings revealing a major breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
Specifically, the journal published new research on two patients who received chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.
T-cells are an essential part of our immune system. And CAR T-cell therapy modifies a patient’s T-cells in a way that enables the T-cells to attack cancer cells. In other words, it “enhances” the body’s immune system.
Here’s how it works…
First, clinicians remove T-cells from the patient’s body. Then they modify the T-cells to increase their ability to identify cancer proteins. From there, clinicians multiply the T-cells and inject them into the patient.
Once inside the body, these modified T-cells actively latch on to cancer cells. This effectively shuts the cancer down, putting it in remission.
And here’s the most impressive part – the modified T-cells multiply themselves inside of the patient. This increases the body’s ability to fight cancer over time. It’s why we call this therapy a “living drug.”
This is all spelled out in long-term patient data.
The Nature study followed two patients with a form of blood cancer for over a decade. Researchers treated both patients with this CAR T-cell therapy back in 2010. This was very much an experimental therapy at the time.
And the results were fantastic.
The modified T-cells still persist within the patients’ immune system more than 10 years later. And, of course, the patients remain cancer-free… That’s the most important thing.
This is the longest study on the efficacy of CAR T-cell therapy in treating cancer. And these results should excite us all.
I know these two patients represent a small sample. However, this news will be a major boon for the industry.
There are a lot of biotech companies out there working to develop CAR T-cell therapies. And we will see incredible investments pour into those companies in response to this research.
And any company working on these therapies just became a potential buyout target. We’ll likely see some biopharma giants make some acquisitions in this space over the next 12 months.
Of course, that can lead to some massive investment gains.
Just look at when pharmaceutical giant Celgene acquired Juno Therapeutics for $9 billion back in 2018. I remember the deal well, as I had been preparing to recommend Juno in my flagship publication, The Near Future Report.
Then Celgene stepped in and took the company off the market at a 91% premium to where it had been trading… Celgene beat me to the punch.
Given all the excitement in the space, I’ll be looking closely at CAR T-focused therapeutic companies this year.
The future of coastal transportation…
Another really cool early stage company has caught my attention, with an interesting and novel approach to transportation.
Regent just raised nearly $25 million in a round that was led by PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital. Interestingly, a small airline called Mesa Air Group also invested.
And that speaks to what Regent is working on…
This company developed a modern version of a sea glider. Here’s a look:
Regent’s Sea Glider
Source: Regent
Here we can see the concept. This kind of looks like a seaplane, but it has eight propellers and an odd V-shaped structure underneath the fuselage. It can seat 12 passengers and is capable of reaching top speeds of 180 miles per hour.
But this isn’t just a modern, fancy seaplane design.
For one, it’s fully electric. That makes it incredibly quiet.
And the seaplane uses hydrofoil technology. The hydrofoil is the V-shaped structure that we see in the image above.
It provides lift for the aircraft as it starts to move faster through the water for takeoff. And when the aircraft is flying, it provides stability in flight.
This craft also uses what’s called the “ground effect” by flying over a surface. In this case, it flies over water (instead of at high altitudes like a normal plane).
The sea glider hovers just above the water’s surface. Using the ground effect actually improves the efficiency of flight.
Less power is required to keep the aircraft in the air, which helps the batteries last longer. Better efficiency also results in both longer flights and less weight required for batteries. The company expects these vehicles to travel up to 500 miles on one charge.
So the idea here is that this craft can transport passengers between coastal cities. And as we know, many coastal cities are large population centers.
That means there’s a massive market for a product like this.
Imagine being able to take off from San Francisco Bay and fly to Los Angeles in about an hour without having to deal with SFO or LAX airports.
The view would be stunning as well, flying just above the Pacific Ocean along the California coastline. This would redefine the Pacific Coast Highway that I’m sure many of us have driven…
And here’s the most interesting part – the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) doesn’t regulate it. Instead, we categorize this craft as a “wing-in-ground” (WIG) vehicle. That means we regulate it like a boat, and that it falls under the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction.
This is huge.
FAA regulations are notoriously restrictive. The agency is very slow to approve new forms of aircraft.
So Regent should see a much faster path to regulatory approval than traditional aircraft. That means a faster time to market, which is critical for early stage companies like Regent.
What’s more, Regent’s sea glider could be an attractive option for aspiring pilots.
The FAA requires pilots to have 1,500 hours of flight time under their belt before they can work at a commercial airline, limiting qualified candidates.
Plus, many airline pilots have quit their jobs recently, in response to the restrictive policies the airlines put in place around the COVID-19 pandemic.
This dynamic has created a labor shortage for large commercial airlines. Regent’s approach to coastal transportation could offer a great solution.
So I’m very excited to follow this company going forward. And bigger picture, this is a great example of what I call the “future of transportation” trend.
We are reinventing how we get from Point A to Point B.
This will create many great investment opportunities for savvy investors as the trend plays out. To learn about a few of these investments on my radar, go right here for more information…
The big CRISPR patent battle has re-emerged…
Just when we thought it had been settled, the patent dispute between the University of California (UC) at Berkeley and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is back in court.
Longtime readers may remember that we talked about this legal dispute back in September 2020. That was when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected UC Berkeley’s infringement claims for the second time.
As a refresher, both UC Berkeley and the Broad Institute discovered and developed CRISPR genetic editing technology. The lead CRISPR researchers from both institutions filed patent applications for the technology back in 2012.
The USPTO initially awarded priority for the foundational CRISPR patents to the Broad Institute, which are also the patents that Editas Medicine is built upon. Its patents specifically envisioned CRISPR working inside eukaryotic cells – in other words, inside living organisms.
UC Berkeley, on the other hand, did not envision the application for eukaryotic cells. The researchers didn’t even mention eukaryotic cells in their original patents. That’s the biggest weakness in UC Berkeley’s infringement claims.
But UC Berkeley just refuses to give up.
Their legal team now claims that their patents implied the use of CRISPR in living organisms as the logical next step. Their most recent legal positioning is along the lines of it being just a matter of “reducing it to practice.”
In other words, UC Berkeley is saying it would have gotten around to applying the tech in living organisms.
To me, this argument borders on idiocy.
Patents must, by definition, have specificity. They must envision how new technology will be used… and that’s why the Broad Institute’s position is so strong.
The idea that patent priority could be established by the mere possibility, that at some future time, the filers of the patent would probably get around to actually inventing a future, but yet unknown technology, just because it is logical that something like that might happen in the future is ridiculous.
Still, we will have to see what the court ruling says this time. This is UC Berkeley’s fourth attempt to challenge Broad.
This has become highly politicized, in part thanks to the Nobel organization. Three scientists were involved in the early developments of CRISPR technology: Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, and Feng Zhang.
Feng Zhang was the inventor of CRISPR technology and the use of guide RNA for its application in eukaryotic cells. This invention, among many other related patents, belongs to the Broad Institute and is licensed by Editas Medicine for commercial applications.
Doudna and Charpentier’s patents came after Zhang and did not envision applications for eukaryotic cells. Yet the Nobel organization awarded Doudna and Charpentier the Nobel Prize, and intentionally overlooked Zhang.
From my perspective, it was disgusting for the Nobel organization to have done that. Zhang’s contributions were arguably more significant than Doudna and Charpentier’s, and they certainly weren’t any less important.
This patent case also highlights something about academia that isn’t very well understood.
These elite research institutions pass themselves off as magnanimous contributors to society… but when it comes down to it, they are all about the money. We’ve even seen this throughout the pandemic.
The budget for the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, was $6 billion in 2021.
Billions of dollars in grants were given out to primarily academic institutions during the pandemic, but only to those organizations that “toed the line” and espoused the political narrative with regards to COVID-19 pandemic policy.
This is why the real scientific research was censored and banned by medical journals and academic institutions, and ultimately by the mainstream media.
And that’s why UC Berkeley refuses to give up here. The stakes are even higher than the NIAID’s budget. There are literally tens of billions of dollars at stake.
Whoever can claim the foundational patents around CRISPR technology will generate massive revenues by licensing the tech out to biotechnology companies who want to use it.
Of course, the inevitable outcome, once the patent challenges have been dropped, is for these research institutions to form a patent pool to enable cross-licensing deals throughout the industry.
This is the solution that would truly benefit all parties, and it would enable rapid development within the biotech industry.
So I hope this next ruling will pave the way for a CRISPR patent pool. That’s when we will finally see a resolution to the ongoing conflict, and the industry will be free to commercialize CRISPR-based therapies for the good of humankind.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
P.S. As I mentioned above, my exclusive briefing occurs just hours from now. If you haven’t already RSVP’d, please don’t delay. Simply go right here to reserve your spot.
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