6 ms·

Great article on this trend of investors/entrepreneurs with no scientific background thinking they can get into the space and "shake things up": Silicon Valley

Great article on this trend of investors/entrepreneurs with no scientific background thinking they can get into the space and "shake things up": Silicon Valley is confusing pseudo-science with innovation[0] > I don’t think all the VC firms that are moving into the space know what they’re doing — so I think you only need a couple of nasty failures to get them to pull back. Take Pathway Genomics, for instance, which was selling a test that was supposed to tell you if you had cancer. I say "supposed to" because it turns out no one — including Pathway Genomics itself — had done any research whatsoever to determine the test actually did what it said it did. The company sold the test directly to patients through a regulatory loophole, and after we wrote about it, the FDA got wind and told them to knock it off. But Pathway had investors: Edelson Technology Partners, Founders Fund, IBM Watson Group. You’ll notice these are not health care firms. In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which SV investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s. 0: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-venture-capital-tech-bubble-disruption http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10642070/2015-theranos-ve...

ejstronge 11y ago
I don't know much about Stemcentrx - why do you think they will fail? Their science page sounds reasonable; antibody-drug conjugates don't seem far-fetched and I don't think they're the only ones pursuing that therapeutic paradigm.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Stemcentrx does seem the most reasonable of the three companies I mentioned from a scientific standpoint, but this area is fraught with prior failures[0]. It's just the nature of the industry. Also[1]: > The company says that they’re doing 150 xenografts a day (!) But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”. If your drug fails in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic. But if your drug works in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic, too. The odds get better, but they go from “extremely likely not to work” to “pretty likely not to work”, and you take what you can get in this business. > So how’s Stemcentrx doing in their cell hunt? They’re not going to tell Technology Review, naturally, but as the article mentions, the entire CSC hypothesis has been taking some hits recently. It’s still very much an open question. How many tumor types are driven by stem cells, whether they can be targeted (and how), how to tell when such an approach is indicated at all – there are a lot of open questions. It seems very likely that there are cell types inside a given tumor population that are more aggressive and likely to spread, but whether that narrows down to a particular stem cell group, I don’t know. What if there are 234 cell types in some particular tumor, and (say) fourteen of them are the ones to really worry about? What then? Will there be a common mechanism to target these, or not? 0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-shares-plunge-after-company-halts-cancer-drug-trial/trHendPQ0ewSqLm2pixltJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha... 1: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/chasing-cancer-stem-cells http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/cha...
- jamesad 11y ago
  Stemcentrx must be doing something unique as they were recently named the best new drug developer at the recent antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) Summit in San Diego, and have been the topic of some flattering press about their lead compound (http://www.firstwordpharma.com/node/1319074?tsid=28#axzz3nF03Jv4Z http://www.firstwordpharma.com/node/1319074?tsid=28#axzz3nF0...). Other presentations showing clinical activity are also below: http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-safety-activity-and-response-durability-assessment-of-single-agent-rovalpituzumab-tesirine-a-delta-like-protein-3-dll3-targeted-antibody-drug-conjugate-adc-in-small-cell-lung-cancer-sclc http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-safety-... http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-a-phase-1-study-of-pf-06647020-an-antibody-drug-conjugate-targeting-ptk7-in-patients-with-advanced-solid-tumors http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-a-phase...
- StewsNews 11y ago
  Lumping Stemcentrx in with the others is extremely ill reasoned imo. The most basic of google searches show some pretty impressive stuff being done there. http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra136 http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra136 http://www.esmo.org/Conferences/Past-Conferences/European-Cancer-Congress-2015/News/First-Targeted-Treatment-for-Small-Cell-Lung-Cancer-Shows-Promise http://www.esmo.org/Conferences/Past-Conferences/European-Ca... While the second link is only phase 1, those are some impressive numbers. Finally, their clinical trials page (http://stemcentrx.com/clinical-trials.html http://stemcentrx.com/clinical-trials.html) shows two Pfizer collaborations, pretty sure Pfizer has a pretty good pulse on these things.
  - w1ntermute 11y ago
    As I stated in the sibling comment, Stemcentrx is indeed much more reasonable than either Theranos or Nootrobox. However, a $5B valuation is still absurdly optimistic when you consider the comps. There have been massive setbacks at Verastem even after getting to phase 2[0], and Verastem's science originated from a top MIT research lab. 0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-shares-plunge-after-company-halts-cancer-drug-trial/trHendPQ0ewSqLm2pixltJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha...
    - StewsNews 11y ago
      Agreed, that is a lot if true, the MIT article[0] gave a 3 billion number and also mentions that the latest valuation was determined by Fidelity not some silicon valley VC firm. This all leads me to stick with the assertion that I would not lump the three in any way. 0: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541006/peter-thiel-backs-biotech-unicorn-fighting-cancer-stem-cells/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541006/peter-thiel-back...
      - w1ntermute 11y ago
        The latest valuation is $5B, according to the WSJ[0]. The latest (series G) round was led by Fidelity, but Founders Fund, ARTIS Ventures, and SV Bank also participated in it[1]. Also, there's actually talk of Fidelity bringing sanity to startup valuations[2,3], rather than pumping them up even higher. You're right that Stemcentrx, unlike Theranos or Nootrobox, doesn't smell of SV hucksterism. However, rather than comparing Stemcentrx to Theranos or Nootrobox, compare them to OncoMed, Verastem, and Stemline, which have current public valuations of $700M, $65M, and $116M, respectively. And none of them ever exceeded $1.2B in their public valuations. 0: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/09/16/peter-thiel-backed-stemcentrx-emerges-with-5-billion-valuation/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/09/16/peter-thiel-b... 1: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/7db717567346f07e604cb2feb8472cb0 https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/7db717567346f07e604... 2: http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup-in-fidelitys-crosshairs/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup... 3: http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/fidelity-marks-down-tech-unicorns/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/fidelity-marks-down-tech-unico...
camel_gopher 11y ago
The cofounder Michael Scanlon has a neuroscience PhD. http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Read his bio more carefully - he doesn't have a PhD, he was a PhD student. He does have an MS in neuroscience though[0]. 0: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/founder-stories-lumositys-mike-scanlon-on-exercising-the-brain/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/founder-stories-lumositys-m...
- lettergram 11y ago
  He never actually got a PhD: > Prior to founding Lumosity, Michael was a neuroscience PhD student at Stanford University. > Michael graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Psychology.
- kolbe 11y ago
  Even if he had one, having "a neuroscience PhD" isn't even close to enough experience necessary to fulfill the expectations of running a robust, legal and ethical medical technology company. Lumosity seems like one of those companies that bit off more than it could chew. Then, to fulfill investor expectations, they started to engage in shady and unethical sales practices.
jacquesm 11y ago
> In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s. More likely, what will happen is the the BS artists that smell money will go away (and their financiers) leaving the field again to those that were active there before a few high profile exits brought the smell of blood.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Good point - I edited that sentence to say 'SV investor' instead. There were, are, and always will be people outside of the technobubble innovating in fields like healthcare and energy, they just won't get plastered on magazine covers and fêted by the Twitterati.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > they just won't get plastered on magazine covers and fêted by the Twitterati. Most science and real innovation are not sexy, if you start seeing a CEO prior to achievement on a magazine cover that's a red flag imho.
kazinator 11y ago
If pseudo-science sells, it feels like innovation! There is like all this new money discovered in new places where it wasn't before. Innovation, right in my pockets!
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  Hmm... on the one hand, I've always thought lumosity was obviously woo. On the other hand, you could make exactly the same claims ("1) improve performance on everyday tasks, in school, at work, and in athletics; 2) delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease; and 3) reduce cognitive impairment associated with health conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Turner syndrome, and that scientific studies proved these benefits") about an "herbal supplement" and you'd be legally in the clear. Why is Lumosity's suite of product offerings more similar to prescription medicine (heavily regulated) than to dodgy supplements that might or might not contain mostly meth (basically unregulated)?
  - intrasight 11y ago
    Supplements industry lobbied congress to pass a law exempting them from FDA regulation.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Sure -- but Lumosity can't be prosecuted under FDA regulation, unless the scope of "food and drugs" has undergone some fairly significant expansion. I assume supplements are still subject to the FTC. There is no plausible argument that it's fine to make unsubstantiated health-related claims in order to sell your edible product that is intended to be bioactive, but not in order to sell your video games. In terms of potential harm to consumers, the ratio there could best be approximated as 100-to-0.
      - intrasight 11y ago
        I agree. But it's about politics, lobbyists, and money.
untilHellbanned 11y ago
I'm impressed your comment hasn't gotten downvoted to oblivion. Every time I express this same point I get my ass kicked (Soon to be professor with Ph.D in molecular biology and 2 years of medical training all at top 5 institutions).
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Looks like the crowd agrees with my post (currently at 38 upvotes), but it suddenly got pushed down below several others a few minutes ago. Perhaps intervention from the mods?
  - untilHellbanned 11y ago
    mentioning intervention by mods is always good for a few downvotes. Sad but not unexpected. Can't avoid the po-po wherever you go.

ejstronge 11y ago

I don't know much about Stemcentrx - why do you think they will fail? Their science page sounds reasonable; antibody-drug conjugates don't seem far-fetched and I don't think they're the only ones pursuing that therapeutic paradigm.

w1ntermute 11y ago
Stemcentrx does seem the most reasonable of the three companies I mentioned from a scientific standpoint, but this area is fraught with prior failures[0]. It's just the nature of the industry. Also[1]: > The company says that they’re doing 150 xenografts a day (!) But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”. If your drug fails in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic. But if your drug works in a xenograft, it will probably fail in the clinic, too. The odds get better, but they go from “extremely likely not to work” to “pretty likely not to work”, and you take what you can get in this business. > So how’s Stemcentrx doing in their cell hunt? They’re not going to tell Technology Review, naturally, but as the article mentions, the entire CSC hypothesis has been taking some hits recently. It’s still very much an open question. How many tumor types are driven by stem cells, whether they can be targeted (and how), how to tell when such an approach is indicated at all – there are a lot of open questions. It seems very likely that there are cell types inside a given tumor population that are more aggressive and likely to spread, but whether that narrows down to a particular stem cell group, I don’t know. What if there are 234 cell types in some particular tumor, and (say) fourteen of them are the ones to really worry about? What then? Will there be a common mechanism to target these, or not? 0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-shares-plunge-after-company-halts-cancer-drug-trial/trHendPQ0ewSqLm2pixltJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha... 1: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/chasing-cancer-stem-cells http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/cha...
jamesad 11y ago
Stemcentrx must be doing something unique as they were recently named the best new drug developer at the recent antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) Summit in San Diego, and have been the topic of some flattering press about their lead compound (http://www.firstwordpharma.com/node/1319074?tsid=28#axzz3nF03Jv4Z http://www.firstwordpharma.com/node/1319074?tsid=28#axzz3nF0...). Other presentations showing clinical activity are also below: http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-safety-activity-and-response-durability-assessment-of-single-agent-rovalpituzumab-tesirine-a-delta-like-protein-3-dll3-targeted-antibody-drug-conjugate-adc-in-small-cell-lung-cancer-sclc http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-safety-... http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-a-phase-1-study-of-pf-06647020-an-antibody-drug-conjugate-targeting-ptk7-in-patients-with-advanced-solid-tumors http://player.meta-fusion.com/late-breaking-abstract-a-phase...
StewsNews 11y ago
Lumping Stemcentrx in with the others is extremely ill reasoned imo. The most basic of google searches show some pretty impressive stuff being done there. http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra136 http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/302/302ra136 http://www.esmo.org/Conferences/Past-Conferences/European-Cancer-Congress-2015/News/First-Targeted-Treatment-for-Small-Cell-Lung-Cancer-Shows-Promise http://www.esmo.org/Conferences/Past-Conferences/European-Ca... While the second link is only phase 1, those are some impressive numbers. Finally, their clinical trials page (http://stemcentrx.com/clinical-trials.html http://stemcentrx.com/clinical-trials.html) shows two Pfizer collaborations, pretty sure Pfizer has a pretty good pulse on these things.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  As I stated in the sibling comment, Stemcentrx is indeed much more reasonable than either Theranos or Nootrobox. However, a $5B valuation is still absurdly optimistic when you consider the comps. There have been massive setbacks at Verastem even after getting to phase 2[0], and Verastem's science originated from a top MIT research lab. 0: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-shares-plunge-after-company-halts-cancer-drug-trial/trHendPQ0ewSqLm2pixltJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/verastem-sha...
  - StewsNews 11y ago
    Agreed, that is a lot if true, the MIT article[0] gave a 3 billion number and also mentions that the latest valuation was determined by Fidelity not some silicon valley VC firm. This all leads me to stick with the assertion that I would not lump the three in any way. 0: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541006/peter-thiel-backs-biotech-unicorn-fighting-cancer-stem-cells/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541006/peter-thiel-back...
    - w1ntermute 11y ago
      The latest valuation is $5B, according to the WSJ[0]. The latest (series G) round was led by Fidelity, but Founders Fund, ARTIS Ventures, and SV Bank also participated in it[1]. Also, there's actually talk of Fidelity bringing sanity to startup valuations[2,3], rather than pumping them up even higher. You're right that Stemcentrx, unlike Theranos or Nootrobox, doesn't smell of SV hucksterism. However, rather than comparing Stemcentrx to Theranos or Nootrobox, compare them to OncoMed, Verastem, and Stemline, which have current public valuations of $700M, $65M, and $116M, respectively. And none of them ever exceeded $1.2B in their public valuations. 0: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/09/16/peter-thiel-backed-stemcentrx-emerges-with-5-billion-valuation/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/09/16/peter-thiel-b... 1: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/7db717567346f07e604cb2feb8472cb0 https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/7db717567346f07e604... 2: http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup-in-fidelitys-crosshairs/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/snapchat-isnt-the-only-startup... 3: http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/fidelity-marks-down-tech-unicorns/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/fidelity-marks-down-tech-unico...

camel_gopher 11y ago

The cofounder Michael Scanlon has a neuroscience PhD. http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team http://www.lumosity.com/about/our_team

w1ntermute 11y ago
Read his bio more carefully - he doesn't have a PhD, he was a PhD student. He does have an MS in neuroscience though[0]. 0: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/founder-stories-lumositys-mike-scanlon-on-exercising-the-brain/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/founder-stories-lumositys-m...
lettergram 11y ago
He never actually got a PhD: > Prior to founding Lumosity, Michael was a neuroscience PhD student at Stanford University. > Michael graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Psychology.
kolbe 11y ago
Even if he had one, having "a neuroscience PhD" isn't even close to enough experience necessary to fulfill the expectations of running a robust, legal and ethical medical technology company. Lumosity seems like one of those companies that bit off more than it could chew. Then, to fulfill investor expectations, they started to engage in shady and unethical sales practices.

jacquesm 11y ago

> In the next couple of years, we're probably going to see companies like Nootrobox, Stemcentrx, and Theranos go belly up, after which investor interest in the healthcare industry will dry up, just as it did in the energy industry after the late 2000s. More likely, what will happen is the the BS artists that smell money will go away (and their financiers) leaving the field again to those that were active there before a few high profile exits brought the smell of blood.

w1ntermute 11y ago
Good point - I edited that sentence to say 'SV investor' instead. There were, are, and always will be people outside of the technobubble innovating in fields like healthcare and energy, they just won't get plastered on magazine covers and fêted by the Twitterati.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > they just won't get plastered on magazine covers and fêted by the Twitterati. Most science and real innovation are not sexy, if you start seeing a CEO prior to achievement on a magazine cover that's a red flag imho.

kazinator 11y ago

If pseudo-science sells, it feels like innovation! There is like all this new money discovered in new places where it wasn't before. Innovation, right in my pockets!

thaumasiotes 11y ago
Hmm... on the one hand, I've always thought lumosity was obviously woo. On the other hand, you could make exactly the same claims ("1) improve performance on everyday tasks, in school, at work, and in athletics; 2) delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease; and 3) reduce cognitive impairment associated with health conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Turner syndrome, and that scientific studies proved these benefits") about an "herbal supplement" and you'd be legally in the clear. Why is Lumosity's suite of product offerings more similar to prescription medicine (heavily regulated) than to dodgy supplements that might or might not contain mostly meth (basically unregulated)?
- intrasight 11y ago
  Supplements industry lobbied congress to pass a law exempting them from FDA regulation.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Sure -- but Lumosity can't be prosecuted under FDA regulation, unless the scope of "food and drugs" has undergone some fairly significant expansion. I assume supplements are still subject to the FTC. There is no plausible argument that it's fine to make unsubstantiated health-related claims in order to sell your edible product that is intended to be bioactive, but not in order to sell your video games. In terms of potential harm to consumers, the ratio there could best be approximated as 100-to-0.
    - intrasight 11y ago
      I agree. But it's about politics, lobbyists, and money.

untilHellbanned 11y ago

I'm impressed your comment hasn't gotten downvoted to oblivion. Every time I express this same point I get my ass kicked (Soon to be professor with Ph.D in molecular biology and 2 years of medical training all at top 5 institutions).

w1ntermute 11y ago
Looks like the crowd agrees with my post (currently at 38 upvotes), but it suddenly got pushed down below several others a few minutes ago. Perhaps intervention from the mods?
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  mentioning intervention by mods is always good for a few downvotes. Sad but not unexpected. Can't avoid the po-po wherever you go.