The standard stuff. What you see with any "anti-aging" or hair loss stuff.
Ridiculous promises that are always "5 years away" while you get paid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“It’s a great gig if you can convince people to send money and use it to pay exorbitant salaries and do it for 20 years and make claims for 10,” Olshansky said. “You’ve lived the high life and get investors by whipping up excitement and saying the benefits will come sooner than they really are.”
Research by Sinclair and others helped spark interest in resveratrol, an ingredient in red wine, for its potential anti-aging properties. In 2004, Sinclair co-founded a company, Sirtris, to test resveratrol’s potential benefits and declared in an interview with the journal Science it was “as close to a miraculous molecule as you can find.” GlaxoSmithKline bought the company in 2008 for $720 million. By the time Glaxo halted the research in 2010 because of underwhelming results with possible side effects,
Sinclair had already received $8 million from the sale, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents. He also had earned $297,000 a year in consulting fees from the company, according to The Wall Street Journal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resveratrol in
a pill would that make you young and on top cure all possible diseases like diabetes and even cancer) via the (never confirmed, but often postulated) process of activation of SIRT enzymes, or sirtuins. These are NAD-dependent deacetylases of various proteins involved in cancer and sensescence, which led Sinclair and Guarente to another commercial idea, namely that of NAD+ as SIRT1 activator, marketable as dietary supplement.
Sinclair sold Sirtis to the pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for $700 million, which made him and Guarente very, very rich. GSK however soon regretted the purchase and abandoned the SIRT research. The snag was hit long before any pharmacological efficiency could be tested in vivo, namely with achieving any significant bio-availability of resveratrol. It is not clear if the lead product SRT501 ever delivered anything. On top of that, one of Sirtris’ original founders Christoph Westphal had to resign when GSK found out he was
selling same SRT501 supplements via his own private company. Sirtis then tried its luck with alternative supplements (SRT2104 and SRT1720) but that led nowhere either (there were rumours of toxicity), so GSK pulled the plug completely.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This should all seem very familiar. Eg: Christiano, Naughton, etc..
Charisma, hype, and business acumen are generally more valuable than pure science.
www.folliclethought.com
