I read this. Made me pee in my pants.
BioPulse's Jonathan Neville (Transcript of Interview)
London, Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The following is a transcript of a Bloomberg interview with Jonathan Neville, chief executive of BioPulse International Inc. The reporter is Philip Hampsheir.
HAMPSHEIR: Hello, and welcome to the Small Cap Focus. I'm Philip Hampsheir, and today I'm interviewing Jonathan Neville. He's CEO of health care company BioPulse.
Thank you very much for joining us, Jonathan.
NEVILLE: Thank you for having me.
HAMPSHEIR: What do you do at BioPulse?
NEVILLE: I'm the chief executive officer. I'm primarily responsible for coordinating all the activities of the company. And I focus mostly on the licensing agreements we have with various biotech companies.
HAMPSHEIR: OK. Now the company itself owns a little hospital which has a converted motel in Tijuana, Mexico, is that right? What do you do at this hospital?
NEVILLE: We provide We're one of only two companies in the world that have commercially available cancer vaccines which we provide to patients. We have a capacity for approximately 40 patients on an in-patient basis right now, and we also are able to produce approximately 40 vaccines a month at the laboratory, which is located near the hospital.
HAMPSHEIR: Now, these vaccines, these are individual for each patient, aren't they? You make them from the patient's urine?
NEVILLE: No, not from the patient's urine. To create a cancer vaccine requires a source of tumor antigen. And this can be derived from the tumor tissue itself, which we do when that tissue is available either through biopsy or through surgery, or you can have it derived from other body fluids. And there is a method that we have a patent pending on to derive this tumor antigen from the urine. It's not the urine that we use for the vaccine; it's the tumor antigen derived from the urine.
HAMPSHEIR: Really. I was talking to a doctor and he said there weren't any cancer cells actually in the urine, so how do you do that?
NEVILLE: OK, it is not cancer cells that we use. It's correct, there are no cancer cells in the urine. But there are these tumor antigens, which are the markers that are on the surface of cells that are excreted in the urine. And there's a lot of scientific literature that explains this process.
HAMPSHEIR: OK, you also use vitamin C, don't you?
NEVILLE: We use vitamin C, and we use a variety of other nutritional supplementation and medications and alternative treatments, primarily focused on boosting the body's immune system.
In order for a cancer vaccine to be effective, the body has to have a very strong immune response.
HAMPSHEIR: OK, now Barrie Cassileth, he's a specialist in alternative medicine at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital over in New York, said that giving people vitamin C when they have cancer could actually be dangerous for them and actually boost the cancer.
NEVILLE: There is a controversy about that. And there's been studies showing both that vitamin C in low dosage can increase cancer and that vitamin C in high dosages can kill off cancer. And we have oncologists on staff that monitor that. It's not a treatment that's for every cancer patient. It has to be medically indicated for the particular patient.
HAMPSHEIR: OK, let's talk about one of your largest shareholders, a gentleman called John Liviakis.
NEVILLE: Yes.
HAMPSHEIR: Now, John has 1.5 million shares in your company. He received those. He's also your financial PR agent. How can he have so many shares?
NEVILLE: Well, he actually doesn't have that many shares. There is a group of people that have different roles in the company that have those shares. So the number you gave me was incorrect.
HAMPSHEIR: OK.
NEVILLE: However, John Liviakis is...
HAMPSHEIR: OK, how many shares does he have?
NEVILLE: It's a little over a million shares.
He is our John Liviakis is one of the premiere investor relations firms in the world and they only accept two or three clients a year. We were very fortunate to have him select us among the companies that he evaluates to handle the investor relations and public relations.
HAMPSHEIR: OK, now what are your success rates for your treatments?
NEVILLE: Success rates for cancer treatments, there's no hard-and-fast number that you can give. Typically in a...
HAMPSHEIR: In round figures.
NEVILLE: In round figures. Well, if a success is measured by improvement in quality of life, which it typically is for later stage cancer patients, that the majority of our patients have an increased quality of life and even remission of their cancer.
HAMPSHEIR: OK, but do they still go on to die from the cancer?
NEVILLE: Some of them do, sure. As I say, the majority of our patients have improved quality of life and extended longevity, but we're not successful with all of our patients.
HAMPSHEIR: OK, but John Liviakis on his web site actually says you have high success rates in treating cancer.
NEVILLE: That's right.
HAMPSHEIR: What backup does he have for that? What results do you have from tests?
NEVILLE: From tests? I'm not sure I follow you.
HAMPSHEIR: Have you actually screened people? What follow-up have you done?
NEVILLE: OK, we do an extensive amount of diagnostics on every one of our patients, beyond what is medically indicated. For example, we do multiple CAT scans, MRIs, bone scans, and tumor marker tests on each one to monitor their progress.
And that's the exciting thing about what we've done, is we've been able to make a big difference in these people's lives.
HAMPSHEIR: Well, Jon, thank you very much for joining us.
NEVILLE: Thank you.
***END OF TRANSCRIPT***
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