Frazzled, frizzled and fracked? It must be the run-in to Christmas!

It's that time of year again, the one beloved by many and dreaded by others, but it's as inevitable as the first snow of winter - that would be the one that hit us from behind this week in Montreal- and yes, we are talking about Christmas! There's nothing like Christmas to get everyone into a furious frenzy over end-of-year craziness at work, the manic madness of the last-minute shopping sprees and the political pressure of the office party with its microscope(s).

Most folks vocalise at some point or other during the year that it's all just nuts and why do we put ourselves through it, and this year is going to be different, but then, boom, it's the festive season out of the blue once more, and into Santa's grinder we all go; out we come at the other end as frazzled, frizzled and fracked versions of our normal selves. The question is - why?!

Even though we find out way too soon that there's no Santa Claus, and it's all a myth, it seems we cling on to the need to have a big blowout at year's end even as adults. It might be a healthy way of sort of writing off a tough year, in a haze of shopping and partying, or it might just be a throwback to when responsibilities were non-existent and we didn't have a care in the world. Suddenly, activities that are totally taboo the rest of the year, like Monday night at the pub and Wednesday evening cocktail-fueled karaoke, become the norm and it's acceptable to show up at the office like you barely got three hours sleep - because you did!

So for a week or two each December, people get to stuff their faces like there's no tomorrow, drink enough to make them wake wishing there had been no tomorrow, and then repeat until the reality of the dreaded January 1st or 2nd comes-a-knocking. The highlight usually being of course, the annual office party, where, perhaps due to the fatigue from everything else that's going on, people are at their weakest and the drinks kick in even faster than usual. Cue the behaviour that the smartphone and camera-carrying voyeurs simply love, as they sip on their mineral water and ice. 

It's all a bit silly, of course, but if we are trying to have a brief return to lighter days, then it seems that Christmas serves its purpose, but it can kinda get in the way of work. Thus on the one hand there is that end-of-year craziness and the (often) imaginary deadlines at the office, then there are various office/networking parties to attend, then there's late night shopping, and then it's back to work to repeat it all again - increasingly the worse for wear. 

I am not a big believer in the end-of-year myth, and I am not talking about Santa Claus! It's the adult end-of-year myth. The fallacy that I am referring to is that somewhat inexplicably, perhaps actually as a way of limiting the self-indulgence of the staff, after either a bad year or even a great year, suddenly everything must get done by December 22nd. Tell me whenever one week of extra work has changed things forever in a company and I will show you the eighth wonder of the world . But it's a habit most bosses find hard to kick - that last chance in the year to kick some butt, often because they are behind on their own targets. 

But at a time when people are already frazzled, extra pressure gets piled on, and the tension and tiredness in the workplace turns it into a real pressure cooker, which actually leads to a greater need to blow off the steam with unceremonious vigour at the free bar later in the day. I think both management and staff play a role in all of this, with the responsibility being shared to differing degrees depending on where you work. It takes two to tango, and only one to ruin the dance completely.

First off, if after what appeared to be a rather productive year (in the employees eyes) and a stressful degree of pressure is applied to meet "urgent" deadlines before the holidays, well, someone higher up should have been monitoring progress and performance earlier and addressed it. You are highly unlikely to be popular when you suddenly wake up in the first week of December, realising you are way behind, panicking, then transferring that panic onto the staff. This is just weak management - pure and simple. 

Ditto (in a related but less obvious way) for the staff. There's not much point in blissfully ignoring what goals you were set in your evaluation six months or a year ago, and then suddenly being forced to face them in early or mid-December. And it's totally naive to think that after a rather lacklustre year, if you are seen running around like a chicken with its head cut off, arms full of folders and fury, that the boss is gonna actually notice it and take it into account for your yearly bonus. He or she is probably too busy with the free champagne him/herself!

If we all take more responsibility for what we are meant to achieve each year, and this includes both ends of the workplace spectrum, management and staff, then guess what - we all get to actually enjoy the run-in to the holidays with no nonsense or cosmetically added pressure and stress piled onto our weakening shoulders. The idea being that we already are probably not at our productive best by mid-December when various distractions kick in, so take care of business the other 50 weeks of the year and then you can ease off on the gas a little for the last week or two at work. This is the way to acknowledge a good year by the team, and it may just do wonders for team spirit and morale that it's the boss kicking staff out of cubicles at 3pm and letting them do some early shopping before the pub at 6pm. 

Who knows, it may even be a way to actually look forward to the approach to the holidays and the annual shutting down of business and professional life until the new year. Yes, yes, things are different if there is a multimillion dollar deal that needs closing, or a huge order that must go out, but this is the exception and not the norm at Christmas. Unless of course, you work for Canada Post or Amazon, in which case the holidays come the day after December 25th! :)

It's not just Hillary - the entire nation got Trumped!

Image courtesy of Global News

Well, well, well, the rather "interesting" world we live just got one helluva lot more interesting after the Presidential election we all witnessed (into the wee small hours) last Tuesday night! To say that the Trumpster shook the world would not be overstatement; in fact he maybe even caused the entire planet to spin a little faster, or shifted the Earth off it's usual 23 degree axis by a few degrees! He's most definitely not standing behind her today, and some actually believe that SNL helped him get there - the exact opposite of their apparent intent! 

Irrespective of which candidate one preferred, democracy had its day, and this was no George Bush-Al Gore repeat, chads and all. That 2000 election came down to the voters of Florida, with barely hundreds separating the candidates out of almost 6 million votes cast. This time it became clear that Florida was falling quite early on, and fall it did before Tuesday even became Wednesday. That was an essential state for each to win, and its falling caused aftershocks that reached high into both Trump Tower and the Peninsula Hotel in downtown Manhattan. 

The dominoes of key states such as Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania then all fell into each other and firmly into place for Trump, and the reality began to kick in for one and all - not least Donald Trump himself - who seemed somewhat bemused or even tranquilised by (the gravity of) what he had just achieved. It was an astounding, unpredicted victory but one which was met with rather subdued celebrations by the victor, unlike (ironically) what would have transpired had it been Clinton. 

There are a few key points that are at the root of all of this and one was most definitely the media who misguided America (the world?!) into a false sense of security that all was right with the world, and Clinton was a sure-fire winner. Maybe that was true in the cityscape towers and territory that the media inhabit, but it was far from reality in the inner cities and suburbs where raging discontent was festering. Ultimately the nation played their Trump card, beautifully, regardless of the candidate's actual merits. 

The meddling of FBI director James Comey during the last days of the campaign simply raised further (excuses for) distrust of Clinton, and some pundits claim he cost her the election. Whether he also sensed a Trump victory and wanted to assure his job is unclear, but for sure he's probably safer under Trump. Clinton would likely have savaged him had she won, and I think his departure would have been inevitable. 

The overarching (perceived) arrogance of Clinton was a huge turn-off to the American electorate, and even early polling had shown that, but she appeared sure she still had it in the bag, maybe until a day or two prior to the election itself. Sadly for her - as a career politician who has a family legacy of White House and senior political office experience - if she couldn't beat the likes of Donald Trump to the highest elected office in the land, then that career is now over. Her defeat by Trump makes even her 2008 primary loss to Obama look more significant than it appeared at the time, i.e. she would have lost to almost anyone. 

As much as the sycophantic media and Clinton's fawning entourage claimed they had victory in their grasp,  it was Trump's thermometers that were spot on in terms of their guaging it as way too close to call in key battleground states, and the needle firmly in the red in many others. While all around her shuffled nervously and avoided questions, early in the evening Kellyanne Conway (Trump's campaign manager) calmly predicted Florida would fall, as would Michigan and Pennsylvania, and she was clearly confident that the Republicans would win - and she was right. However, what's not so clear is whether the Donald was so sure he would win, or whether he even truly wanted that job at the end of the day. And a very long day it was. 

The big question is of course what happens next?! In my opinion, Trump is gonna learn exactly what it means to make a bunch of promises, outrageous promises in his case, as a means-to-an-end to get elected POTUS, and then actually win. It's quite trivial to say one will do this and one will change that, when one barely believes it's ever going to matter. Suddenly thrust into power, and into the hotseat, is quite another thing entirely, and that famous hair is likely to get singed by the burning spotlight that will now be focused on it, 24/7.

He's now between a rock and a hard place. He spoke out for the working man and the disenfranchised and the crumbling inner cities, promising to build walls, expel illegals and repeal Obamacare, and on and on and on. If he chooses to become all soft spoken and presidential now, because he shockingly won, there will be a rebellion amongst the electorate who put him there and just like Obama, he will become a lame duck by mid-terms, in 2018. 

On the other hand, if he maintains his hard line and goes (further) rogue, he will keep the support of the electorate but will put America into very dangerous territory and lose America further support globally. If there's a fine line to tread between his extremes and the reality of governing a land as massive (in more ways than size) as the USA, I am not sure he knows how to either find or tread that fine line. Only time will tell, and it's an experiment that could go either way, including horrifically wrong. 

His first post-election interview on "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl was more the former, with him all soft focus lens/soft spoken, and already backtracking on some major promises made in the run-in - remind you of anyone? I think he's gonna understand Barack Obama a whole lot better, in a very short time! But if he starts to sound and act like him?  Good luck beyond 2018. 

As much as disruption and innovation are buzz words adored (and perhaps overused) in our life science ecosystem (or the economy in general), we don't seem so fond of it when it comes to the election process! There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a disruptor, and in fact he disrupted the entire election process by fighting his way through not only the lengthy Republican primaries but also a general election against a darling of Wall Street. He didn't do it by taking money from special interests or lobbyists or big banks or Wall Street, because he didn't have to - he had the money - which is a truly unique and innovative way to become POTUS! 

It's stretching the point I know, but unquestionably he chose to forgo any normal route to such power, and used his wealth and considerable fame/notoriety as the primary driver of any political validity. Some would argue that he had and still has no political validity whatsoever, but he himself would readily counter that by arguing back that he is currently President-elect of the United States and that makes him pretty politically valid, like it or not! 

What does a Trunp government mean for our business, and in particular for the world of pharmaceuticals? Well, I think they are probably a bit more excited than they were under Obama. He actually referred to the stashing of offshore profits as "Un-American", even if he was simultaneously in bed with many of them, in particular the tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft. But the Trumpster is offering big tax breaks to big business and that could make him the darling of big pharma. 

If he follows through on allowing a one-time tax holiday on repatriation of offshore funds, this could have big pharma dancing in the aisles with their bottom lines overflowing in cash. And what do big pharma do when there's billions in the bank? Well they merge, of course, and so a Trump presidency could trigger some mega mergers, inside the USA, given the potential future redundancy of tax inversions under a Trump regime. 

While not as vocal as either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders on pricing wars in pharma, Trump is going to exert some influence there, but it is believed that the generics marketplace is where he will be toughest. He wants Americans to pay the lowest price available, and if that means allowing a foreign competitor to do well on American soil, so be it, because he believes in that type of competition being both fair and very good for business. This parallel market is being held back under current regulations, but Trump will facilitate it. 

It's most definitely a brave new world when the President of the free world is a real estate tycoon most famous for shenanigans on a reality TV show, who has never been elected to any political office and has essentially zero experience (or comprehension) of national politics never mind global politics, nor international diplomacy. It's going to be both fascinating and occasionally frightening to watch, but you know, by as early as 2018 and potentially no later than 2020, if he screws it up then the American electorate will be the people invoking his most famous line, informing him, "Donald, you're fired!"

Millennial malaise or simply mass media marketing?!

Whither the Millennials? What's going on with this new generation, and what's at the root of their generationally unique malaise? Why's the why in Y? I've had quite a few conversations on this topic of late, most recently with a few individuals I met at the Gairdner Awards Lectures last week, and it's pretty accurate to say that opinions are pretty divided along chronological and thus generational lines. 

The Baby Boomers and even a lot of the Generation Xers, don't know what all the fuss is about, and yet Millennials don't know Y there isn't even more fuss - over themselves - while Generation Z thinks of Millennials as "Heard enough about them already" or simply "They're so yesterday, already!" Maybe given the "Z", this will be the last "generation" we will have to categorise (and tolerate!), and we can all get back to just being human beings once more? 

While I doubt that totally, it would be progress of sorts. I don't recall seeing so much discussion about the particularities of a particular demographic as the Millennials; it's as if they are in fact a different species, a different breed of humanoid. Employers and managers everywhere are being lectured to by talking heads about how one should attract, engage and retain such types, as if the rule book had suddenly been rewritten specifically for them!

Well, it sort of has, and there is a clear reason for that. It's marketing/advertising trends that were forced to change so as to address the way in which Millennials (and any others embracing the brave new world of all things digital) gather information and make purchases (of almost any kind), and those changes have sort of bled over into the work marketplace as well, correctly or not. We always get to blame the media for all sorts of things, and this is no exception, because they seem to have given Millennials the impression that the workplace should cater to their wants in the same way that You Tube, Snapchat or even Apple does.  

I think it's both a good thing and a bad thing, because while it may force some old dinosaur companies to upgrade their thinking and approach to the workforce and workplace, it also perpetuates the inappropriate sentiment that Millennials are in some way "special" and "unique". Frankly, when it comes to rolling one's sleeves up and getting on with some genuine hard work rather than fussing over what the conditions are, agonising over being stuck in an open cubicle and not a fancy office, and whether snacks are free, previous generations win hands-down. And they never felt entitled to well-paying jobs for which they didn't have (any) experience, either. 

It's all very well that the individual thinks of him/herself almost exclusively when considering working for this company or that start-up, however, some fundamentals have not nor will ever change. It's not about you, when you are an absolute beginner! You simply cannot have built up sufficient professional reputation or experience in your twenties, to matter that much. No one cares whether your office is too small, or the chair's not comfy enough, when you haven't achieved anything yet. The media may care, your parents may care, but no one working in that place does! 

Unquestionably, the current generation have been way more mollycoddled on their journey through high school and university, and they exit with a mindset very, very different from earlier generations. Even if they haven't yet exited home - and therein lies part of the problem methinks. While baby boomers, and to a lesser extent Gen Xers, would have been slapped around the head and told "You need to get your feet back on the ground, son, you ain't no different than the rest of us!" it seems the Millennials got a friendly hand on the shoulder and informed "You can be anything you want to be, don't let anyone tell you otherwise! You are special!". 

I think there is probably a middle ground that is the best approach, but for those who swallowed the anything-is-possible Kool-Aid too literally, they are almost predestined to turn out discontent with their lot in life. You know, there can only be one POTUS at any given time, sometimes for 8 years in a row. And look at just who is currently believing "Yes, we can!" even if they have about as much political experience as the average domestic housecat. It's not always a good thing to think one can do anything, and the trophies-for-everyone mindset that permeates our culture today is not realistic and is not helping.  

Some political expressions do last a lifetime, though, and a timeless one will always be JFK's rallying call at his inauguration to be the 35th POTUS, where he used the now historic "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!" line. It's a classic line with enormous significance, but one with a sentiment sadly lacking in today's generation. It is all about me-me-me, and what you can do for me. But for every Mark Zuckerberg or Sean Parker, there are tens of millions of unknowns, and they need to get their feet firmly (back) on solid ground. 

Some of the old timers that hang out in a local bistro near where I live have their own solution - "They should all be made to do some military service, that will stop their whining!" - which even if probably quite accurate, is not the way out of the predicament in today's world. Having said that, the state the world is in right now, with precarious choices about to be made south of the border, might imply that conscription is gonna have to be brought back at some point! 

I hear the predictions that Millennials are going to make up 50% of the workforce by 2020, and 75% by 2030, but guess what, that does not inandof itself guarantee them jobs! Another problem they face is (brand) loyalty. While the average job tenure of a Baby Boomer was pegged at 7 years and Gen Xers at 5, it seems that two years is the likely duration of a Millennial after you hire them. Their message is that if you don't continue to engage and benefit me, I am gone, but the other side of that coin is a demonstrated loyalty score of more or less zero, and commensurate zero staying power. As an employer, this would scare the hell out of me. 

The kids don't seem to realise that in almost any job, achieving something real and of true significance rarely happens in two years. Those of us who started our careers doing PhDs and postdocs learnt that the hard way, but you know, that makes us better employees. Yes, we probably need a crash course on being more selfish, and thinking of ourselves even a little more, but when it comes to getting stuck in and showing a company we are in it to win it, and will be in it for the long haul, we are light years ahead. 

The Generation Xers were not exactly a bundle of laughs, and they had their own railing against the system - as all young generations should, to an extent - but they were primarily studious navel gazers who realised there was nothing to be done. "Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage" sort of said it all, from none other than Billy Corgan. Guess what, they all grew up and got over it, rolled their sleeves up, and made their contribution in the end. 

Millennials seem a little less sure about that approach. They are fussed over so much by the marketing media world we live in, that when it comes to profession and career, they seemingly want to separate themselves from the rest of the world. As absolute beginners. "I've nothing much to offer,  there's nothing much to take, I'm an absolute beginner" is a line from legend David Bowie that should be deeply analysed by those malcontents who insist on asking for more before it is merited. How did Bowie get everything he wanted?! By sheer genius, yes, but coupled with an incredible work ethic and absolute dedication to his craft. 

It is the case that it is probably the Millennials, via their consistent communication and engagement on social media in particular, that have educated/changed the world we live in, with their total impatience for segregation or bias of any type, whether it be based in race, xenophobia, gender, transgender issues, sexuality or anything else. They have opened up many doors, including some bathroom doors! So apparently they are for a total melting pot of everything mixed in together, for a better world. 

And yet, it is this same generation that seems hell bent on separating themselves out from everyone based on age and chronology, and their unique needs? So they are against segregation, just most of the time? The proliferation of "next generation" or "young (insert any white collar profession) network" associations/gatherings underlines a need for separation and secret handshake exchanges, to ensure their career development? I hear a lot of comments about Millennials sticking together like (lost) sheep in the workplace, presumably as some form of identity sharing or safety in numbers. There is incongruity in the approach and I sure don't intend to figure it out, but I know I preferred to confer with people senior to me, who knew more than me, and who could do more for me. Just common sense to a non-Millennial! 

The bottom line, sadly, is that even Millennials are no different from anyone that came before them. They are the same people in the same old s**t, except they now have smartphones in their hands. They are still forced to go work for the man, and that man is gonna be considerably older and richer than they are, and they are still gonna have to roll their sleeves up and get on with some decades of solid conscientious hard graft. Whether that be in 7 years here, and 3 there, or five 2 year stints - it doesn't matter - a decade is still a decade! 

Nothing can trump experience, and even Trump can't trump experience! That's the ticket to advancement, since the sun first rose, and no amount of demanding special treatment or feeling unique can take the place of thinking of your employer's needs first, then getting what you want, second. The earth may indeed have shifted a few points on its previous axis, but the world has not changed that much yet, and Millennials are going to have to get on board on this one, and settle for being little different after all. Maybe by the time Generation MMM (Me, Myself, My; aka Generation 3M!) or ZZZ comes around,  the business world will be run by young adults - until then - it's business as usual, folks! :) 

PS The musical references included above are of greater significance than just lyrical examples of the situation. It's my belief that this generation's almost total lack of brilliant alternative (to the bland pap on the radio) music with which the generation's cool kids could identify, is one part of their malaise. They didn't live the rebellion (and you can't really rebel while still wanting to live at home as an adult!) of early 70s rock that annoyed the hell out of Baby Boomer parents, they didn't experience the bliss that was the shattering of that rock by late 70s punk, they never lived the new wave of the 80s, nor the navel-gazing guitar band movement of the Gen Xers in the early 90s. They got lumbered with Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Michael Buble, and even the Kardashians: a fate worse than death itself! 

Editing a blazing trail into a heated trial - daily life in the world of CRISPR!

           

Science and biotechnology continue to push ahead exponentially, and in today's world that means making big bets ahead of truly understanding both the full capacity and potential dangers inherent to certain technologies. It's hard to think of a hotter yet simultaneously controversial example than CRISPR, the next generation gene-editing tool that is capturing not only the imagination of us scientists, but even those in Hollywood!

Yes, believe it or not, even before CRISPR has gotten close to the nail-biting moment of using it on humans, Jenny-from-the-block herself, Jennifer Lopez, apparently wants to produce a TV show centred around the nascent technology. That's quite something for an untested, unproven therapy, and it probably does reflect not only that hardcore science is becoming more and more mainstream these days, but also that CRISPR itself is causing considerable controversy all on its own. I just can't wait to hear the words "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" on a TV show; bet you can't say that fast, three times in a row, Jen! 

The potential of CRISPR to change the world of medicine in the post-genomics age is scary-level huge, and of course that potential is not limited to classical medicine but in effect also brings us crashing into a brave (frightening) new world where science can be used to edit something which has evolved over an eternity - our DNA - and messing with that in anything but the most controlled of conditions could have devastating consequences. 

But this is the world we are living in today, and the relentless push of next-generation therapeutic approaches such as CAR-T and CRISPR will continue to revolutionise that world, and only a lack of money could hinder or prevent that. This does not seem to be an issue thus far for the "big three" in CRISPR commercialisation who have now all gone public in recent IPOs; that trio of course consists of Editas Medicine, Intellia Therapeutics and CRISPR Therapeutics. 

Editas ($EDIT) was the first out of the gate back in February, with Intellia ($NTLA) following a few months later, and this week it was the turn of CRISPR ($CRSP). The former two raised about $100M each (on top of considerable VC and pharma money) in their respective IPOs, while CRISPR came in at around $56M, failing to hit their initial target of $90M. Analysts were quick to jump on this, implying that the bottom is already falling out of the market, and this fact had negatively impacted $CRSP's raise. 

While investors may indeed be a little less sanguine on this avant garde and risky bet than a year ago, it is worth pointing out that both $EDIT and $NTLA have seen their market cap nibbled at and all three companies actually have a similar valuation today. In fact, $CRSP is pretty much par for the course, with a current valuation just short of the $500M mark, which is in the same ballpark as the other two after their valuations slipped somewhat and were adjusted post-IPO. 

The confounding factor here is not only which one of these three will get to the first-in-man clinical trial, first, but they are also all facing the reality of the ongoing and explosively contentious patent wars regarding who-owns-what with respect to CRISPR technology. At the heart of the dispute is whether it is indeed UC Berkeley and Doudna/Charpentier who should own key patents in the field, or whether the current status quo should be upheld such that the great majority of the key patents at stake should remain the property of the Broad Institute and Feng Zhang. Additionally, although it garners way less media attention, another prestigious institution, the Rockefeller, is also involved in the fracas and they are claiming that one of their scientists (Marraffini) should be named on specific Zhang/Broad granted patents. 

Apart from egos and bragging rights, there is a vast amount at stake in this patent interference case, and the decision of the USPTO could have staggering consequences for those who do not prevail. At the very least, their bottom line will be affected by being forced to pay no doubt elaborate license fees to use the technology therapeutically. Or, if a decision was made against Zhang, the new owners could license the technology to a competitor of Editas, for example, and the company would be in very deep you-know-what. At worst, if investor and pharma attention swings away from the losers to focus on the (new) owners of the IP, the other companies may struggle to even survive. The temperature during the legal exchanges and between the major scientific players must be a little crisp, to say the least! 

I am in Toronto next week for the Canadian "Gairdner Awards" lectures at the University of Toronto, and you can be sure I will be watching closely as Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, and the wunderkinde of the bunch, Feng Zhang all present their work. It will be interesting to see how they position their contributions, with all of the legal shenanigans and inter-institutional fighting still going on in the background. You can be sure I will be looking and listening for any signs of tension or bold claims of ownership during the presentations - watch this space for an update! 

A bitter biotech brew fermenting into something sweeter - it just needed time!

The word "biotech" of late, while not exactly being a dirty or unholy word by any means, certainly was one which was considered out of time or out of fashion here in the province of Quebec, since 2008 effectively. While there were a myriad of reasons (and even more excuses) for that, the bottom line was that biotech in the Montreal area just didn't work out and the windows were shuttered one after the other, province-wide. Yes, there were one or two noted exceptions, but that didn't save the industry. 

Now if you have never opened a biotech company and then presided over its closing and subsequent gutting of its laboratory and office spaces, then it might be easier to just look at it as a real estate deal gone south. But as someone charged with getting a shiny new but empty space turned into a fully functional modern laboratory facility, and then years later being charged with emptying it out and selling off the parts at firesale-type prices, well, I've been there and done that and would prefer not to live that experience again!

Yes, yes, entrepreneurs have to embrace failure, blah blah, and learn from it, uh huh, but in almost every case of an entrepreneur failing, there are a whole bunch of individuals who by association (and loyalty) must fail alongside them, even after doing their jobs diligently over many dedicated years. The ~350 employees just let go by Theranos, for example, surely know how that feels, today. It's the least fun side of what is typically a brutal business (biotech life) - with what seems like a >95% chance of failure, almost all of the time - even when it's going well!

So why would we at AmorChem even be considering branching out into that milieu once more, after having tasted the bitter brew of biotech business in the past, in previous funds? Well, there is that mantra of "if at first you don't succeed" and of embracing failure, and, of course, the key element of embracing failure is learning from it, and then coming back bigger, better and stronger. Unquestionably, we have learnt valuable lessons from previous endeavours, as have other players in the local ecosystem who are already embracing a return to biotech - 2016 style!

Without going into the details of what went wrong in the business, historically, (there's not enough space in one blog to go into it all!) to cut a long story short we continue to need a vehicle of sorts to nurture and mature our most promising projects. Given that we are a very early-stage life science venture fund, it is completely legitimate to say that 18-24 months of our support rarely leads to that big pharma deal and the much sought after exit for both ourselves as well as our own investors. 

Rather, our support over the typical lifespan of our university-incubated projects leads to a clearer picture regarding which technologies have evolved, and which are ready for further elaboration into a structure that both permits additional investment/development and adds a degree of professionalisation to the team, whilst earmarking the venture as a commercially viable candidate for acquisition. 

It's not as obvious as it may seem to convert what was an entirely academic project and team into a biotech company (real or virtual), as anyone who has lived that experience knows well. But we have made the decision that for chosen exciting technologies which are coupled with talented teams, we will move them forward into their very own (more or less) virtual entities that will be responsible for subsequent development of those technologies towards commercialisation and the marketplace. 

Ergo, and to wit, the recent nucleation and creation of Mperia Therapeutics which arose out of a stellar effort over many years at the University of Montreal, under the auspices of Professor Huy Ong (pictured above) and his dedicated roster of collaborators and researchers. This new entity is being led by local life science serial entrepreneur, Maxime Ranger, who has passionately stepped into the fray to take Dr. Ong's azapeptide technology (focused on age-dependent macular degeneration, for now) to the next level. We wish them the very best and are behind them 100%.

We are not done yet though, and without giving too much away, we have other select technologies from our portfolio that we intend to proceed similarly, some of which have already grabbed attention from local VCs in terms of them joining us in financing such further evolution into the biotech space. There will be more news on that as it happens, but for sure one lesson we have learned is to keep things virtual as long as possible, and spend the money on actual experimentation rather than on infrastructure and top-heavy management teams. 

In many ways this is a continuation of our modus operandi since the debut of AmorChem, whereby we incubated our projects where they began, i.e. in founder's laboratories - to apply maximal funds to pure research - and the interest in the local ecosystem for some of our currently being-positioned newcos is testament to the success of that approach. Mperia was first, but there are others to follow - watch this space! 

Social media depend on an engaged society - now they might just make us healthier in return!

As far apart as the technological worlds of social media and drug discovery may well seem to be, there is a new trend that marries the vast wealth obtained by pioneers in the former to funding the forefront of the latter. When we consider the dizzying digital world that we now live in, trying to remember what life was like before email, social media and smartphones, well, somehow all roads tend to be lead back to that single word and entity - Facebook. 

Things have changed, of course, and today Facebook's biggest challenge has less to do with connecting people both locally and globally, but given that they are a publicly traded company, they have to make enough money to keep the boardroom and shareholders happy. In that vein, Facebook is as much an advertising and marketing tool today for many companies, rather than simply a social media outlet. Monetizing Facebook, particularly on mobile, has been one of Mark Zuckerberg's greatest challenges, and by all accounts he is doing rather well at it; even if their monetization strategy has not always been clear. 

Irrespective of how Facebook founders intend to continue to make money, the clearest thing about them is that they are already incredibly wealthy and are generously spreading some of that wealth into the healthcare arena. Peter Thiel, the legendary investor who discovered Facebook, has put cash into some 25 biotech start-ups to date. Sean Parker (famously played by Justin Timberlake in the movie) made a donation of some $24M a while back, to found the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research at Stanford University, which is one of the biggest private donations for allergy research ever in the USA. 

Further, just this summer, it was announced that Parker would be funding the first ever clinical trial of the controversial gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, as part and parcel of his Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy - an initiative that involves six leading cancer centres - spanning some 40 laboratories and more than 300 researchers all focused on immunotherapy. He will shell out an extremely cool $250M on that one!

Given such contributions, and the humanitarian efforts of other technology pioneers and social leaders such as Bill Gates, well, it was inevitable that it would draw other big dogs to the table. Ergo, and to wit, the announcement this past week that Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, were donating a massive $3B to "cure, prevent or manage all disease within our children's lifetime."

That is an ambition as equally massive as their donation! That amount, coming from a private couple, is probably one of the biggest medical research donations ever, anywhere, and if any kind of "sibling" rivalry between Parker and Zuckerberg helped fuel that monster donation, well, researchers and clinicians are not going to complain about it! $600M of that money will be doled out over the next decade under the auspices of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which intends to invoke a multidisciplinary approach in addressing human disease. 

You know, as scientists we tend to snigger at over-hyped announcements by tech execs claiming they will "eradicate" or "cure" this disease or that disease or even all disease, as if money was the only object in the way.  It is a major obstacle, yes, but if that was the only thing in the way, then we would have cured HIV and cancer already, right? Entities like Microsoft and Facebook tend to face some backlash for over-hyped claims of how they will set medical research on the right track, as if having a PhD or MD and a decade's laboratory experience has little to do with it. 

But in this case it is worth pointing out that Zuckerberg is talking "patience" and the idea is to achieve the Initiative's goals over the next century (yes, 100 years!) and they are not claiming that they will cure cancer in a mere handful of years. The media laps up major donations from big Silicon Valley names such as the Chan-Zuckerbergs, and it is often they, not the donors, who inflate the story into a de facto mission impossible. Doomed from the start, by all the hype. 

Having said that, they have chosen a bigtime neuroscientist as the President of the new venture, none other than Cori Bargmann, who is currently a professor at Rockefeller studying C. elegans neurobiology. This coupled with oversight from a stellar scientific advisory board should pave the way to some big science, which according to Bargmann, will incorporate academia, biotech and engineering. 

Social media have been very pervasive in our lives, it's almost impossible not to have been touched by them in some way today, and another most pervasive aspect of daily life is human disease; so in many ways the application of the successes of one technological advance that depends on society's involvement towards the ongoing health of that society somehow seems entirely appropriate.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is an extremely admirable one, and you can be sure that I will be watching and commenting on it as things roll out and develop, and hopefully one day we will be discussing the solving of a major health problem for mankind. I just hope that it's not in the latter part of that 100 years, because by then this blog (and I) will he dead and buried - and probably the Chan-Zuckerbergs as well! ;)

One big Go CAR-T less in the vigorous race towards T-cell immunotherapy?!

These days barely a week seems to go by without some big news on the CAR-T front, and given the complexities in manufacturing/production of a distinctly personalised T-cell medicine, it is not surprising that the news is more often bad than good. That's pretty much par for the course for the evolution of a truly groundbreaking new therapy, and it is still advancing at a rather incredible rate!

After recent events that have included the clinical hold placed on Juno's Phase II trial of JCAR015 by the FDA, well, things have been a little shaky. The death of three patients under 25 was subsequently ascribed to the combination of fludaribine into a regimen that previously used only cyclophosphamide for pre-conditioning, though Juno's proposal to restart the trial using only cyclophosphamide was extremely rapidly approved by the FDA. 

Some believe that it was too rapid a turnaround given the deaths, but Juno executives appear to have been extremely persuasive in their arguments, and the shares that had plunged on the bad news soared back up once more when the clinical hold was lifted. The FDA is not known for being particularly expeditious or pharma-friendly especially when people are dying in clinical trials, so the mere days required to get the clinical hold lifted are indicative of a collective enthusiasm at the agency to get this novel treatment tested and approved - apparently, at least.

Not long before the Juno problems, top competitor Kite announced that the NIH were going to review their cell therapy manufacturing facilities at the National Cancer Institute, even if such intervention was not anticipated to impact their pivotal multi-centre Phase II trial of Kite-C19 CAR-T product. However, they were not permitted to enrol more patients until such review will be completed, and the ecosystem bristled at the prospect of more bad news. 

On top of all of this came the somewhat stunning news last week that pharmaceutical giant Novartis was "pulling back" from the forefront of the CAR-T race, and would be disbanding the cell and gene therapies unit (CGTU) that was behind their CTL019 treatment, currently in Phase II clinical trials. While this might have seemed a natural step to take if they were announcing it as an aspect of their success in having jumped all of the manufacturing hurdles and having flown threw the various regulatory hoops, in actuality this was hardly the case. 

Au contraire, in fact. First came the news that 120 workers at CGTU were being axed, with the pharma stating that the rest of the outfit was simply being reintegrated back into the mothership as part and parcel of their immuno-oncology division. That sounds truly bizarre to me; take something that is as unique and uniquely challenging as manufacture of CAR-T therapeutics, back out of a specialised unit charged with so doing, and stick it right back into the pharmacological parent giant from which it was extruded in the first place? Right in the middle of critical clinical trials? Things that make you go "hmmm"!

Next came the news that it wasn't just laboratory hands that were being let go, but the bulk of the senior executives running the cell therapy unit were also being axed, and that doesn't sound optimistic at all. The job is not done, as far as we are aware at any rate, and why would you not let the team stick around to at least get credit for successfully applying for an NDA and having CTL019 approved for marketing?! Apparently that's not to be, as outlined in a leaked memo from Oz Asam himself:

"Unfortunately a number of colleagues will be impacted by this change as many positions are being eliminated. Impacted US-based associates are being notified in meetings today. Associates based in Basel will learn more about their individual circumstances on Thursday. The majority of the CGTU Leadership Team members, who are among the best I have worked with, are also impacted."

"Among the best that I have worked with" yet you are eliminating them? Are you kidding me? Especially given that Novartis restated their commitment to CAR-T technology and that they intend to file with the FDA in early 2017 and with the EMA later the same year? They are either confident that the job is done and no more tweaking will be needed or they know something that we don't. Rumours that some of the 120 axed job are based at their 173,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Morris Plains, NJ, are hardly comforting in that regard.  

So what is it that Novartis might know that we don't? At worst, one could imagine that there is extremely bad news coming out of their current clinical trials, and Novartis is preparing their exit bit-by-bit, in advance, to soften the blow when the hammer falls. They have invested heavily already, including $43M for the ex-Dendreon facilities in Morris Plains, but why put more good money after bad, if the news is indeed bad? A scary prospect! 

Honeslty though, I don't think that's it. My take on it is that Novartis have been somewhat rocked by the recent turbulence in the field in general, and probably have come up against technical issues or clinical challenges that have convinced them that CAR-T might be too great a developmental and commercial challenge today. Given the equally turbulent political arena in the USA (hell, everywhere!) right now, and the heavy-duty governmental surveillance of the drug pricing wars, well, this could be another factor that might force a serious reconsideration of the commercial prospects for such a personalised medicine. 

CAR-T manufacturing is a much more 24/7 complexity-filled process than producing tablets or even a routine (today) biologic such as a monoclonal antibody. It is clearly a high-risk venture, and in many ways, that may define it as something that only large biotech should take on and hurdle, given their increased capacity (hunger?) for such risk. Pharma tend to be more conservative, and there's not much about CAR-T therapy that aligns with with the word "conservative". 

One pharma's loss is another pharma's gain, and even though he has nothing but respect for Novartis, Kite's Arie Belldegrun clearly sees added opportunity in the reported Novartis withdrawal from the CAR-T race. Ditto Hans Bishop at Juno, although Beldegrun stated that Kite has gotten both the number of cells infused and the doses of both chemotherapeutic agents (fludaribine and cyclophoshamide) worked out so as to avoid the problems experienced at Juno. So maybe Kite has the edge, in September, 2016. 

I quote the month, above, because things are moving, shaking and changing on a monthly basis in this horse race to the finish line, and who knows what will happen next? Speaking personally, it is now time for this horse to put the car-t behind him, get out into the fresh air of a blustery, autumnal Sunday morning and put in some solid laps on the racetrack of Molson Stadium! 

One big Go CAR-T less in the vigorous race towards T-cell immunotherapy?!

These days barely a week seems to go by without some big news on the CAR-T front, and given the complexities in manufacturing/production of a distinctly personalised T-cell medicine, it is not surprising that the news is more often bad than good. That's pretty much par for the course for the evolution of a truly groundbreaking new therapy, and it is still advancing at a rather incredible rate!

After recent events that have included the clinical hold placed on Juno's Phase II trial of JCAR015 by the FDA, well, things have been a little shaky. The death of three patients under 25 was subsequently ascribed to the combination of fludaribine into a regimen that previously used only cyclophosphamide for pre-conditioning, though Juno's proposal to restart the trial using only cyclophosphamide was extremely rapidly approved by the FDA. 

Some believe that it was too rapid a turnaround given the deaths, but Juno executives appear to have been extremely persuasive in their arguments, and the shares that had plunged on the bad news soared back up once more when the clinical hold was lifted. The FDA is not known for being particularly expeditious or pharma-friendly especially when people are dying in clinical trials, so the mere days required to get the clinical hold lifted are indicative of a collective enthusiasm at the agency to get this novel treatment tested and approved - apparently, at least.

Not long before the Juno problems, top competitor Kite announced that the NIH were going to review their cell therapy manufacturing facilities at the National Cancer Institute, even if such intervention was not anticipated to impact their pivotal multi-centre Phase II trial of Kite-C19 CAR-T product. However, they were not permitted to enrol more patients until such review will be completed, and the ecosystem bristled at the prospect of more bad news. 

On top of all of this came the somewhat stunning news last week that pharmaceutical giant Novartis was "pulling back" from the forefront of the CAR-T race, and would be disbanding the cell and gene therapies unit (CGTU) that was behind their CTL019 treatment, currently in Phase II clinical trials. While this might have seemed a natural step to take if they were announcing it as an aspect of their success in having jumped all of the manufacturing hurdles and having flown throw the various regulatory hoops, in actuality this was hardly the case. 

Au contraire, in fact. First came the news that 120 workers at CGTU were being axed, with the pharma stating that the rest of the outfit was simply being reintegrated back into the mothership as part and parcel of their immuno-oncology division. That sounds truly bizarre to me; take something that is as unique and uniquely challenging as manufacture of CAR-T therapeutics, back out of a specialised unit charged with so doing, and stick it right back into the pharmacological parent giant from which it was extruded in the first place? Right in the middle of critical clinical trials? Things that make you go "hmmm"!

Next came the news that it wasn't just laboratory hands that were being let go, but the bulk of the senior executives running the cell therapy unit were also being axed, and that doesn't sound optimistic at all. The job is not done, as far as we are aware at any rate, and why would you not let the team stick around to at least get credit for successfully applying for an NDA and having CTL019 approved for marketing?! Apparently that's not to be, as outlined in a leaked memo from Oz Asam himself:

"Unfortunately a number of colleagues will be impacted by this change as many positions are being eliminated. Impacted US-based associates are being notified in meetings today. Associates based in Basel will learn more about their individual circumstances on Thursday. The majority of the CGTU Leadership Team members, who are among the best I have worked with, are also impacted."

"Among the best that I have worked with" yet you are eliminating them? Are you kidding me? Especially given that Novartis restated their commitment to CAR-T technology and that they intend to file with the FDA in early 2017 and with the EMA later the same year? They are either confident that the job is done and no more tweaking will be needed or they know something that we don't. Rumours that some of the 120 axed job are based at their 173,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Morris Plains, NJ, are hardly comforting in that regard.  

So what is it that Novartis might know that we don't? At worst, one could imagine that there is extremely bad news coming out of their current clinical trials, and Novartis is preparing their exit bit-by-bit, in advance, to soften the blow when the hammer falls. They have invested heavily already, including $43M for the ex-Dendreon facilities in Morris Plains, but why put more good money after bad, if the news is indeed bad? A scary prospect! 

Honeslty though, I don't think that's it. My take on it is that Novartis have been somewhat rocked by the recent turbulence in the field in general, and probably have come up against technical issues or clinical challenges that have convinced them that CAR-T might be too great a developmental and commercial challenge today. Given the equally turbulent political arena in the USA (hell, everywhere!) right now, and the heavy-duty governmental surveillance of the drug pricing wars, well, this could be another factor that might force a serious reconsideration of the commercial prospects for such a personalised medicine. 

CAR-T manufacturing is a much more 24/7 complexity-filled process than producing tablets or even a routine (today) biologic such as a monoclonal antibody. It is clearly a high-risk venture, and in many ways, that may define it as something that only large biotech should take on and hurdle, given their increased capacity (hunger?) for such risk. Pharma tend to be more conservative, and there's not much about CAR-T therapy that aligns with with the word "conservative". 

One pharma's loss is another pharma's gain, and even though he has nothing but respect for Novartis, Kite's Arie Belldegrun clearly sees added opportunity in the reported Novartis withdrawal from the CAR-T race. Ditto Hans Bishop at Juno, although Beldegrun stated that Kite has gotten both the number of cells infused and the doses of both chemotherapeutic agents (fludaribine and cyclophoshamide) worked out so as to avoid the problems experienced at Juno. So maybe Kite has the edge, in September, 2016. 

I quote the month, above, because things are moving, shaking and changing on a monthly basis in this horse race to the finish line, and who knows what will happen next? Speaking personally, it is now time for this horse to put the car-t behind him, get out into the fresh air of a blustery, autumnal Sunday morning and put in some solid laps on the racetrack of Molson Stadium! 

After the joys of summer have gone....

Well, as far away as it seemed back in gloriously early June, here we are once again at the Labour Day long weekend, which both unofficially and officially signals the end of the summer. Or the end of the summer as we know it and I (don't) feel fine, to paraphrase a certain musical voice from Athens, Georgia. 

Even though it's been a long time since the end of summer held its prior darker meaning in our lives, i.e. the dreaded loss of freedom that was the return to schooldays and homework, the end of summer still tends to draw wistful sighs from one and all, and a yearning to go back to the start again. It's not that different from how many feel on a Sunday afternoon and evening after a weekend of freedom, in their adult lives! 

Some of this is just conditioning and comes from deeply ingrained memories from our childhoods, I feel. As a kid growing up in church-dominated Ireland, for example, there was a (un)holy doom and gloom that clung to Sundays like white on rice, and almost nothing could shake it off. Even when we did have a long weekend or were on never-ending lazy summer holidays, with no school on Monday, there was still a blackness oozing out of every empty closed shop that was matched only by the color of the priest's robes at the front of the packed pews. 

I can still smell the hissing starchy steam of my mother's iron pressing on the ironing board on dark, wet Sunday afternoons of childhood, with nothing to rescue me from either gloomy Sunday or the looming Monday ahead. As distant as that reality has become today, the steam apparently has still not evaporated from my senses! Maybe I should simply let off some steam?!

Was there ever anything as desolate as grey, wet street corners in a small Irish town on a Sunday afternoon, we would ask. For young teenagers it felt like death itself and we were jealous of adults for once in our lives because they got to get up on Monday morning and escape the house and go off into town and see their work pals, while we got securely shuffled off to prison for another week of indoctrination and rigorously scheduled shuffling around from one (padded) cell to another. 

Imagine if we had known back then, that we were destined to live the same thing for the next 50-60 years?! For many, I guess that's exactly how it feels, and that's got to be one rough life, living and working just for Friday night and Saturday, and then the dread of Sunday evening or end of summer comes along and the stress levels start to rise again. But you know, even those of us who are lucky enough to love our jobs still carry part of that longing in us, which resurfaces on Labour Day or on occasional Sunday nights; the question is why?!  

As I said, certainly for an Irish schoolboy (or girl!), a lot of it is simply permanently etched into our souls and muscle memroies that Sunday was a day as boring, bleak and black as sin itself, and nothing could be done about it. For us adults, with all of our experience, we know that not to be the case even if we still get the Sunday blues occasionally, and you know, I think that just stems from our innate desire to be free. We are free, in so many interpretations of that word, but we are not free to just go off and walk around the lake on Monday after a nice breakfast in town. 

Much as we do love our job and our work, there is a building desire to be set free, particularly as the number of years left falls below the number of those that have already been lived, and that is probably entirely natural. To rub against the grain, and kick against the fray, to rebel, and refuse to go to the office on Monday morning, instead heading for the hills without a worry in the world and embracing freedom - it's a lovely thought - but we would probably get anxious by early afternoon. 

I often think it might only take a few days or at most weeks of kicking against the fray and playing hooky to remind us of precisely why work is so important in our lives. We derive so much more out of it than our salary, and that is often overlooked when we are facing a tough week ahead on a Sunday night, or are dreaming of never going back again. Last week I chatted with a guy who apparently had and has it all - retired by 52 and free as a bird - and when I pushed him for how he feels about it today, his answer surprised me. He wishes he hadn't -  retired - and feels that 52 was too young. What are you supposed to do when you don't have to go to school but all of your friends are incarcerated there?!

As precious as our weekends, and our holidays, and our summers truly are, we enjoy them all the more because we work the rest of the time, at least in part, to be able to afford and enjoy those precious free hours. To see life through the other side of the coin, from someone who is free to enjoy every day as a free man in Paris (evoking a certain billionaire entertainment mogul seen through the eyes of a legendary Canadian songstress) and who, well, seemed kind of bored, most definitely opened my eyes up to the "free"  life. 

Yes, if you have enough money to do anything/everything you want, then being free all year probably is a great experience. But even then, after a year or two, most of us would return to "what's the point?" Overall, we already have (close to) the right balance, because in the end nothing beats jumping out of bed to go off to do work that stimulates and challenges us, and that produces something that we believe in. That is the holy grail, when it compensates you by providing a lifestyle that is both comfortable and rewarding at the same time. 

So, on this gorgeous (again!) Sunday morning of Labour Day weekend, there are no blues on this street corner, or in this summer office, but rather a most definite sense of freedom that I can stay in bed a little later this Monday morning and Labour Day, and then when Tuesday morning rolls around and I am due back in the office for work, I am going to consider myself one of the lucky ones to be able to go do so. Summer might be (almost) over, but it's going to be an awesome Autumn, and I can't wait for that! The big question after Tuesday of course is whether we can still wear white?!

Investing in Olympic glory is riskier than venture capital!

I've been offline a little longer than usual of late, due in large part to the necessary slowing down of the pace in high summer, as well as in anticipation of the sad but inevitable slide towards September which signals that that's it for another year. Sigh. But one has to make hay while the sun shines, so that's what I've been doing - off making hay! 

On top of earlier summer distractions such as the Montreal Jazz Festival, Euro soccer, and Shark Week, many of us are now buried in the Olympics, and what a treat that has been?! Seeing legends like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt solidifying their legacies essentially beyond compare or repetition, alongside the military precision and dominance of the USA ladies gymnastics team, has been inspirational; no doubt particularly so for superstar newcomers like Katie Ledecky or Lilly King, both of whom are destined to at least try to achieve legend status!

The most striking thing about such noble (notwithstanding doping issues) competition for me is the unseen "sacrifice" made in the four year period between Olympics. I use the inverted commas because when we do anything we love, with passion, maybe even getting paid for it (!), then it's hardly a sacrifice, even if it can occasionally feel like it. Yes, true fans of a given sport do watch the regional and national and international competitions that take place between Olympics, but for many, they only truly get into it when it's Olympics time. Ditto domestic or international soccer, and the World Cup. 

The journey that athletes travel towards the Olympics (or in many cases, a few Olympics) is truly an investment, just like a capital investment, even if the individual him/herself is the product, and one is investing purely in oneself - a person. But isn't that very often the case? As much as we investors are seen to invest in a technology that is usually housed inside a start-up or company umbrella, it is an inevitability that we are equally investing in the individual(s) whose talent and vision we admire. 

But even if we all dream of those overhyped stories of apparent overnight success, or the billion dollar exit after only a few years of investment, that old adage continues to ring true - nothing worth having comes easy - and we are compelled to take the long view, while diligently managing and nurturing and developing those investments slowly over several years, with our third eye never far off that elusive gold medal shining far off in the distance. Athletes surely have the mindset and mental endurance of good investors. 

Maintaining focus and never-ending perseverance are key, as is a regular reloading or topping up of that continuously hard-to-maintain accessory - patience! Imagine being back in 2012 after a frustrating Olympics, and then committing to a new training campaign that would ultimately only be tested or come to fruition some four years later? There just have to be days when (almost) any individual would ask: "Why the hell am I doing this? What for? Who cares?"  

Keeping the faith, keeping patience, and keeping the eye on the prize are all part and parcel of the job, and for athletes and investors alike, some are better than others at sticking the course towards their goal. For those that refuse to give up, hard work and singlemindedness are factors which ultimately should pay off. Ah, but there's the rub, because the world just isn't fair, and while one definitely increases one's chances of success with diligence and dedication, there is that other factor called lady luck that can both grant or shatter dreams! 

There are those for whom everything just seems to fall into place, repeatedly, and effortlessly, while the rest of us seemingly have to sweat blood itself in order to merit any recognition or reward, but you know, bitching about that achieves literally nothing - squared! Focus on that and you are focusing on negative emotions that rarely drive success, unless you can get over it enough to get back to focusing on the positive, at any rate. Some people just seem to be born winners, and that's life. That's it and that's all. Now what you gonna do?!

Apart from the extremely rare cases, anyway, appearances can be deceptive, and for all one knows, so-called born winners may have had a much tougher road than one realises, and/or they do make sacrifices that others (including you) do not - but they don't bitch and moan about it - and that's a characteristic of a real winner right there. Given that we are talking both sports and investing, this subject reminds me of the Peyton Manning-Tom Brady rivalry in the NFL, with Manning not being shy about hating the much more successful, much more pretty-boy handsome and media darling Brady. 

The "much more successful" tag refers not to salary at all because that's not what matters most at this level, but rather, post-season success and the coveted Superbowl ring of a champion. Peyton was behind in that category even though he was considerably older, and you could tell it got to him. Big time. I think he probably did spend some of his energy dwelling on his nemesis' success if not even his very presence in the game, and I doubt it helped much. But he seemed to accept things with time, maybe even getting over it a little, because the only way forward was to focus on himself, not another. And look what happened, Superbowl 2016 went to the Broncos and Manning got his second ring!

The nice thing for us investors is that we have it easier than Olympic athletes because while we do like and need to win occasionally, we simply don't need gold medals or Superbowl victories to be considered successful. A $1B dollar exit is something we all want, but no one is going to turn their nose up at a $100M payday either. Sport is a cruel endeavour in that when it comes to one-on-one finals in most sports, only the winner gets the glory. Who even remembers the losing team in a few years? Aren't they almost by rote referred to as "the losers"?

Olympic competition is a little more generous in that there is gold, silver and bronze, but who remembers which athlete came fourth? If we are realistic also, even among the winners triad, for superstar status and the sponsorships that come-a-calling with it - gold is the currency, and everyone wants it. So it must be tough to step forward after four years of brutal training and come away with less than you could/should have achieved, or worse, with nothing at all. 

That's something that's happened to many an investor and athlete alike, but as investors we tend to have more shots on goal, and rarely lose everything in one event that may have lasted for only minutes, or worse, for mere seconds! We diversify our investments (to some extent at least!) which inandof itself lowers risk, while, say,  a 100 metre sprinter invests four years for a ten second chance at glory and can come away with little more than the Olympic experience, and a broken heart. 

So, on that note, bravo to all those courageous souls out there in Rio competing for Olympic glory, you make our jobs look easy by comparison. And in the meantime, I am off out to go running on the mountain in spite of tonight's pouring rain, in search of my own little sliver of athletic glory! :) 

After all the ballyhoo, it's now toodle-oo to Yahoo!

Back in February of this year, I did predict that Verizon would be a likely top two or final candidate for the acquisition of that tired old dinosaur Yahoo!, and I also stated that even an apparently paltry offer of $5B would have to be taken seriously. No surprise at all to this boy, therefore, that Verizon has indeed acquired the core operations of Yahoo! for a mere $4.8B; for contrast, people, don't forget that this behemoth was once valued at over $200B, and several years ago Yahoo! rebuffed a $45B offer from Microsoft! 

Seeing an Internet pioneer and giant stumbling and falling amidst a rapidly evolving and increasingly competitive ecosystem has not been easy to watch, but in business it is the law of the jungle, and I for one am glad to see the weary, beaten-down beast lying on its side struggling to even breathe while being poked and prodded by passing predators, finally being put out of its misery. It was the only and right thing to do. It had come such a long way from two Stanford PhDs dreaming big in the early days of the earth-changing "world wide web", but ended up as a geriatric has-been, out of fashion, out of touch, and out of time.  

Naturally, the spotlight shines brighter than ever on Google employee #20, and where she goes from here. I think it's a pretty safe bet that she's history, even if rather typically, she is announcing that she's going nowhere and will stay on to finalise the transaction, if nothing more. I am not sure that's a good idea at all, but she has been stubbornly refusing to face reality at Yahoo! for yonks now, so what's six more months?! And the estimates of her ultimate payday ($12M odd at the bottom end, $55M at the mid-zone, and over $120M at the top end) all ensure she will rake it in even after her performance was rated to be sub-par, over and over and over. 

Honestly, the best thing that Tim Armstrong (ex-AOL, and also a former Googler) could do for her, is to talk to the board and arrange her golden parachute, pronto. She failed, let's be frank, and having her around as the beast is now carved open and ripped apart into multiple reusable limbs, is just prolonging that failure and is not going to feel like a fresh start (or fresh anything) for those that are being kept around. Let it go, and let her go, Verizon! 

I actually think she is guilty of hubris at this point, point-blank refusing to walk away from what the entire industry views as an abject failure for a CEO, seemingly hoping that she can somehow rewrite her story in the remaining few months of electronic access to the building, such that she can maybe come out of it looking rosier. Even if the transition from a Yahoo! into a Verizon goes wonderfully, what kind of CV booster is that likely to be? She has got to let go, now; going off on "gardening leave" would be way smarter!

Not unsurprisingly, but rather uncommonly, Ms. Mayer has done some moaning of late about her current predicament, going as far as to accuse the media of gender bias in a recent Financial Times interview that followed the sale of Yahoo!'s core business. It's somewhat ironic in that just a year ago in another interview she stated clearly that gender was not an issue for her as a tech-geek CEO. Perhaps she means that the (sexist) media enjoy seeing women fail, even if that same media did help build her up?!

Just like in Hollywood, you can't have it both ways. If one uses (perhaps even shamelessly) the paparazzi and TMZs of the world to grab attention for oneself as an unknown wannabe, then when one makes it to the big time, one cannot possibly hope that the privacy-invading predators are not going to be following one, 24/7, right? Live by the sword, die by the sword, and all that jazz. 

Now, I have no intention of turning the Yahoo debacle into one of gender bias (Ms. Mayer did that!) and I think it is highly inaccurate to do so. While I agree that life for a female CEO in tech or business cannot be easy, the individual who makes it should normally have seen it all and dealt with it all, if they got there for the right reasons based on both solid experience and stellar performance. So why moan only when it hasn't gone your way, even if being feminine was not an issue in earlier dealings with the media?

Ms. Mayer's provocative pose/photo that adorned the cover of Vogue in 2013 is anything but the typical shot of any male CEO, so she wanted to be seen as different, right?! The shot certainly has more to do with fashion and style (and femininity) than it does tech or business or Yahoo! And why would the CEO of a Yahoo! ever be asked to be on the cover of a Vogue (as opposed to Businessweek or FT)), unless she was known as the epitome of high fashion? Hardly the case for Ms. Mayer, at all. 

If I think of two recent and very prominent in-the-news female CEOs of our time, it would be Mayer and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. While I am not truly in a position to ascertain whether the media apparently enjoy their slide to ignominy because of their gender, I think it's the case that the media elevated them above their male counterparts, in many, many ways., in the first place. That's fair enough, as there are so few female CEOs in the tech world, or even business in general. A mere few percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, in fact. 

So I think it kind of balances out: the media may gush more over prominent female CEOs when they first make it, but unless one rejected the attention and glossy fashion magazine covers on offer, one shouldn't moan about "gender-charged reporting" (Mayer quote) on their writing of one's failure. Schadenfreude has been around for a while, and I don't think it is gender-specific; rather, it's human-specific!

Mayer and Holmes were darlings of both the media and their boards, alike, and each CEO should have been ousted a long time ago. I honestly feel that a male CEO would have been removed sooner, in each case, especially as they are both still sitting CEOs who have everyone except their boards asking for their heads. In the end, it was the boards who remained starstruck even in the face of evaporating value and imploding scandals, respectively. They are responsible ultimately, and it is to them that shareholders should look to for fault. 

Marissa Mayer's failure to turn around Yahoo! had nothing to do with her being a woman. Just as her being a woman had nothing to do with her being hired by Yahoo!. She failed because she never should have been hired in the first place. Being Google employee #20 and a talented product engineer/manager does not a CEO make, particularly of a (struggling) giant such as the behemoth that now was Yahoo! She transparently refused to face reality, repeatedly, and the board correspondingly refused to face her/their reality, repeatedly. It was a most unhealthy combination and outcome. 

It's far from clear if anyone could have turned it around, but failing at doing so at Yahoo! has tarnished her reputation, and should serve as a warning sign to those considering taking the helm at dying public companies. It must be very tempting being offered the top slot at some huge corporation (primarily due to one's star power rather than previous relevant experience) but if one says yes to an impossible task in return for a bucketload of cash, then one can be left with just that, a bucketload of cash, at the end, when one fails. 

But to each their own; maybe a bucketload of money is enough to make up for being blamed for tanking a legendary company, and the clinging tarnished reputation and subsequent career crater are just the ultimate means to an end? Mayer sails off richer than ever, as the Yahoo! brand is evaporated into the vapour trails of Internet history. 

[PS - For those that are wondering, the blue upside-down dress in the photo above is a Michael Kors number!] :)

CIHR - Chaos in Health Research?!

Having spent centuries (well, okay, decades - but it felt like centuries!) at the bench in academic and biotech laboratories, and currently being in a position to invest in transformative research in universities, if there's one thing one gets used to it's listening to griping about having to write grants, the outcome of such applications, and even tales of doom and gloom about the entire process itself. That's business as usual in academia. 

However, of late, there have been much more turbulent rumblings and aftershocks over dysfunction at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the $1B agency to whom Canadian researchers look for funding primarily of their basic research programs. Such dysfunction has led to usually behind-the-scenes scientists risking their neck by speaking out about the problems, demanding changes. 

It takes a deep breath to stand up and shout out that CIHR is screwing up, when one's own laboratory and future may in large part be dependent on CIHR funding - but that's exactly what some scientists are doing - which inandof itself is a sign of how desperate the situation has become. Back in 2015, stem cell bigwig Michael Rudnicki did just that, going as far as to suggest that not only should heads roll at the agency but that Alain Beaudet, its president, should be replaced. 

“I can tell you that the vast majority of Canadian scientists think Alain Beaudet should be replaced with more progressive leadership."

This is a highly vocal and unusual move to bite the hand that feeds one, but it seems that he has the backing not only of some very prominent Canadian scientists,  but the rank and file as well. In fact, in many ways it is the rank and file (more junior, less well established researchers, and female scientists, in particular) that have been hit hardest, and it is only right and proper that some big names step up to the plate and lend their weight (and relative security) to the debate.

 

Daniel Durocher‏@durocher1

Daniel Durocher Retweeted Jim Woodgett

There has to be accountability for this catastrophe. The honorable thing is for A. Beaudet to resign.

Daniel Durocher added,

Jim Woodgett @jwoodgett

Now results are released, there needs to be an external investigation of CIHR Project Scheme. It’s done, but this can never be repeated.

This recent exchange on Twitter between one of the story's top protagonists (big Jim Woodgett) and a (relatively) more junior (but no less highly esteemed) colleague, both of Toronto's Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institiute, is quite telling indeed. Both individuals have done rather well in Canada's research system, but both are quite clearly outraged by what has transpired at the hands of Beaudet, who by the way had his positioned renewed for five more years by the exiting Harper government last April. 

Such conversations were of course commonplace back in the day, but that was back in the day before social media existed and one's comments were essentially coffee area chatter, and anything but public. In today's world things have changed, and scientists (perhaps unexpectedly but not totally surprisingly) are not only on social media, but are using such platforms to reach out, vent or even to rebel, for the whole world to see. 

Beaudet's reforms, particularly the change-up of the classic (beloved?!) peer review process, are viewed by almost one and all as an unmitigated disaster. Under enormous pressure recently, due to a massively supported open letter to Health Minister Jane Philpott from Woodgett and some 1300 scientist supporters, CIHR agreed to meet with Canadian researchers to hear their concerns. But somehow, Beaudet's statement that "CIHR cannot be successful unless it has the confidence of Canadian researchers" comes across more as a swansong (if not an outright admission of defeat) than anything else. 

"Them's retirement words, buddy!"

As if removing the face-to-face aspect of peer review was not bad enough, and with grant success rates hovering around the 15% mark, CIHR rather unbelievably added more salt to the wound and more saltpetre to the flames this past week with yet another simply shocking screw-up. Last Thursday CIHR released results (a day early) on its website for a recent competition, but while informing various scientists of the funding decision, they also named the reviewers of those grants and revealed confidential comments they had made; this  might even be an inglorious first in CIHR history, but even (or especially) if it's not, it is one contemptible cock-up. 

This monumental blurting out of confidential information will probably have more impact in Canada than Hillary Clinton's personal email server had on the United States! Complete anonymity is vital to the peer review process for both grants, and publications arising thereof, and now both the grant reviewers and the scientists they commented on know that the other knows.  You can just imagine the repercussions of that, and how it compromises the integrity and functionality of the CIHR reviewing and granting process. 

What is there left to say? I don't hear anyone defending CIHR, or Beaudet especially, for whom the writing must surely be on the wall. If you lose the support of the scientific community, whose research is funded by taxpayers, and those scientists are taxpayers themselves, and things go from rumblings in the dark room all the way to social media and onto public forums and letters to the health and science ministers, then the government simply has to step in and realign the use of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers hard-earned money with the values and ambitions on which that government was elected. Trudeau's - not Harper's!