Gene dreams : Wall Street, academia, and the rise of biotechnology / Robert Teitelman.

  • Teitelman, Robert
Date:
[1989]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Gene dreams : Wall Street, academia, and the rise of biotechnology / Robert Teitelman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    118/264 page 100
    GENE DREAMS ter also reported that street sources estimated that a report [on the tests] should be out in ten days. Much was made of her desire to protect Alfacell's good relationship with the FDA. Finally, in late April, with the stock into the twenties, came a negative note. Barron's dis¬ covered that the FDA had turned down the request to import Pannon to the Dominican Republic for lack of information. Instead, Alfacell exported the raw materials to Canada and shipped Pannon from there, slipping around the regulatory authorities. No matter. A week or so later, the company announced an interim report on the well-controlled trials ongoing in the Dominican Republic in human cancer patients having the following carcinomas: colon, stom¬ ach, rectum, breast, larynx or penile indications. The bombshell, tick¬ ing over the Dow Jones wire with quarterly earnings reports and stock prices, came in the second paragraph. The clinical testing has proved that Pannon destroys malignant tissue without affecting healthy tis- sue.^^ This certainly sounded like a cancer cure. The tests showed that Pannon is more effective in humans than in animals permitting lower daily doses ... to dissolve the tumors. Alas, a few days later, the FDA moved to stop shipment of Pannon. A difference of opinion, said Fidler, adding the company had no need to ship more anyway. The company also announced that it would present its findings to the FDA in August. By June 25, with the stock back down to fourteen, more than 95 percent of the $6.50 warrants had been exercised, and Alfacell had almost $2 million in the bank. In September 1985, Alfacell had still not submitted its results to the FDA. But it did hold a meeting for investors in a smoky, hot room at the City Mid-Day Club on Wall Street. The room was jammed with investors, in from Long Island and New Jersey, retail brokers, and a few journalists. The investors were restless. Shogen, a thick woman with a school-teacherish air, tried to calm the waters. She talked on about the grand success of the trials, about her optimism and faith. One by one, her officers stood up to testify: Fidler; Joseph Barrows, a consultant for regulatory affairs; the new medical director, Stanislaw Mikulski, who struggled in thickly accented English to explain hazy slides of cancer patients and unfathomable charts demonstrating that Pannon inhibited DNA synthesis in culture; and Steven Carson, a toxicologist from St. John's University. On a table rose thick, blue binders: the test data that were about to go to the FDA, said Barrows. The crowd, however, wanted more tangible results; they had put their hard-earned dollars into Alfacell. They were not professionals; indeed, there was no major in- 100
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3