Background of Dr. Norman Wong

This post is part of a 16 part series of posts taken from the transcript of an interview I (JL) conducted with Resverlogix (RVX.TO) co-founders Dr. Norman Wong (NW) and Donald McCaffrey (DM).

What follows is a lengthy and candid interview about the history of Resverlogix, recent events at the American Heart Association meetings, and future plans for the company.

I'll be publishing two interview segments a day so not all of the links may be active if you are viewing this near the end of March 28-April 5, 2011.

1. Background of Dr. Norman Wong


2. Early History of Resverlogix


3. HDL Biology


4. American Heart Association Meeting - 2010


5. CETP History


6. Importance of HDL Type


7. AHA ASSERT Trial Response


8. ALTs


9. Investor Reaction


10. The Next 2 Years


11. David vs. Goliath


12. Alzheimer's Therapy Potential


13. Upcoming Assure Trial


14. Volatility of Resverlogix


15. Resverlogix is Expanding


16. More on the sell-off

Part 1

JL: Dr. Wong, please tell me a bit about your background.

NW: I'm an endocrinologist. My role is to look after people with diabetes, lipid disorder, thyroid. So that's my medical background.

My research background actually began way before my medical background. In addition to my medical training, I am also a biochemist, and that's where I got started in doing research in relationship to ApoA-1 and HDL. Really the start of the project for where we are today began in 1983. So you can see how long it has taken us to get from just thoughts to the current project that we have today. In 1983, I started my fellowship after finishing my training in internal medicine. The endocrine fellowship is a subspecialty with Internal medicine being the major specialty, and a sub-subspecialty of endocrinology is lipid disorders.

JL: Lipid disorders, that's a huge deal.

NW: Yes. I mean, it's the biggest deal right now for LDL, HDL, sure.

JL: We eat too much food, and we're all fat.

DM: It has taken 27 years to go from his research to reality.

NW: To the pill.

DM: (Puts a bottle of pills is on the table.) 27 years it takes to get here. That's amazing.

NW: We didn't invent this overnight. This is 27 years of research that went into this. In '83, I started to look around at genes that were regulated by various hormones, and that's what an endocrinologist does. And little did I know that I was already working on ApoA-1, but I didn't know it back then. In 1983, we didn't have the technology. We didn't have the questions. We just knew that we were looking for things that responded to hormones, and hormones are little signaling molecules inside the body. When I came back to Calgary in 1987, after four years of fellowship, I was funded by the Canadian government and the Alberta government for my training.

So this thing that we were working on, this gene, after I returned back to Calgary, I sequenced it. Overnight, it was 99.9% homologous with ApoA-1. So overnight, we became an ApoA-1 and HDL lab. That's when Don and I met.

You can find this in the literature. It's published all over the place. And now, we were working with this gene, and my only interest was looking at these hormones that could drive this thing up. And it drove it up 20 fold. Guess what, (it was thyroid hormone) but you can't use thyroid hormones. It's toxic. If you give too much to a patient, they become hyperthyroid. Have you heard of Graves' disease. Remember Monty Python, the guy with the big eyes? He had Graves' disease. So, it's dangerous to give them that molecule. But that's where the first sort of thinking started. And then Don and I became business partners.

Early History of Resverlogix

This post is part of a 16 part series of posts taken from the transcript of an interview I (JL) conducted with Resverlogix (RVX.TO) co-founders Dr. Norman Wong (NW) and Donald McCaffrey (DM).

What follows is a lengthy and candid interview about the history of Resverlogix, recent events at the American Heart Association meetings, and future plans for the company.

I'll be publishing two interview segments a day so not all of the links may be active if you are viewing this near the end of March 28-April 5, 2011.

1. Background of Dr. Norman Wong


2. Early History of Resverlogix


3. HDL Biology


4. American Heart Association Meeting - 2010


5. CETP History


6. Importance of HDL Type


7. AHA ASSERT Trial Response


8. ALTs


9. Investor Reaction


10. The Next 2 Years


11. David vs. Goliath


12. Alzheimer's Therapy Potential


13. Upcoming Assure Trial


14. Volatility of Resverlogix


15. Resverlogix is Expanding


16. More on the sell-off

Part 2

JL: What year was that?

NW: This was 1999. Don had this BioFuture show, which was a very successful biotech show
that was held across Canada and introduced researchers to the investment community but
also brought in a lot of contacts for us to start RVX. I was one of his contacts. He had
this whole session on gene regulation, and somehow he got my name and somehow I got
his name. I looked at this agenda that Don had created. And I said, "Hey Don," or, "Mr.
McCaffrey, I'd like to help you out in this regard. Maybe I could introduce to you some people
who give some of these talks." Then I arranged that whole session for him. Since then,
after the show, the ApoA-1 research started, the experiments started. People told us back
then, this was a decade and a bit ago, that you could not regulate ApoA-1. And the only way
you could regulate it was using time, meaning that as a person aged, it went down lower.
If you were female, because of the estrogen, it would be higher than those in males. And if
you exercise on a regular basis, it could go up maybe 10%. Those were the only three things
that we knew in addition to alcohol. But I can't recommend alcohol to patients.

JL: You can't drink yourself into good health?

NW: No, you can't. That's a double-edged sword.

JL: Really?

NW: It's a double-edged sword.

JL: Damn.

NW: So, we knew by then there was ApoA-1, and small molecules that we were working with
we could regulate this. We went out ( to the research community) and said, "No, I think
you're wrong. I think there are small molecules." And there were snippets of information in
the Literature that backed this up. There were other companies that had worked on this, and
they had failed.

JL: Why do you think that is?

NW: Because their assays were not as good as our assays. We not only looked at one thing,
we looked at many things, and we had talented people to work with. By then, Don and I
had already started working together. We started our lab, and we configured the assays that
would not only look at one element, we looked at many elements. And so, by looking at these
multiple things, we came up with RVX 208.

DM: Yeah, and because of Norman's background in . . .

NW: Chemistry.

DM: . . . ApoA-1 and a lot of the papers written early on that mentioned ApoA-1 were either
written by Norm or he was quoted in them. So about 40% of them in the early days, that's
a lot of recognition. It attracted a lot of the other key people in ApoA-1. The first one it
attracted was Dr. Jan Johansson, who was the founder of Esperion Therapeutics. Esperion
was sold to Pfizer for $1.3 billion. The technology is still out there today. It's only short-term
technology and can be used for about a month.

But nonetheless, we started attracting these various key opinion people, and in doing so, we
collectively grew. You think of a Big Pharma as having this huge brain trust out there that
knows everything.

It's not quite the case. What's happened to pharma over the last two decades is what
happened to the IT business 20 or 30 years ago, where guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
came out of school and they didn't want to go work for IBM and Xerox. They wanted nothing
to do with it. They wanted to go out into the more exciting IT world. Same thing has
happened with the brightest and best coming out of the universities now. Many don't want to
go work for pharma. They want to be in biotech and get stock options and be on the fun end
of it.

Vegas Tales - Rancho Mirage to Vegas Road Trip

I drove from Rancho Mirage to Las Vegas and back a few weeks ago. I love driving through the Mojave Desert, always something interesting on the horizon...which is often 30-60 miles away. On the way there I took some iPhone videos (with the wrong orientation) and on the way back I stopped a few times to take photos. I eventually got the video orientation right... baby steps.

Vegas Tales - I like Celine Dion

I saw Celine Dion and I liked it. I didn’t want to. My daughter was a fan as a pre-teen and my son and I would sing “I Drove All Night” in wavering mock falsetto voices to tease her. To my daughter’s credit and maturity, it rarely worked. I prefer male singer/songwriters (who often struggle with singing) and from time to time , I find it fashionable to be dismissive of successful acts. Celine Dion's massive success leaves ample low hanging fruit for critics, should they choose to be mean spirited.

My wife is a Celine fan and we were scheduled to be in Las Vegas during her opening night performance at Caeser’s Palace. The show was sold out. I thought I would mention StubHub to my wife and leave well enough alone. Seconds later she was logged in. In the spirit of true surrender, I encouraged her to opt for “electronic delivery” tickets as the human element of StubHub can be prone to errors.

There was a noticeable Francophone component in the crowd milling about before the show. Was it just Dion’s extended French-Canadian family in attendance? More likely a huge Quebecois fan base. It was fun to hear boilerplate pre-concert announcements in both English and French... just like home.

The show starts with an ending. A whirlwind video that includes her last show in Las Vegas which was followed her round the world Taking Chances tour. CRAP! Suddenly I’m tearing up because the damn video includes cute comments from little Rene-Charles Angelil to his superstar mommy. I cry watching certain Tim Horton’s commercials and now I’m crying at the sappy introduction to the show. I hate myself.

The show starts with a powerful rendition of Journey’s “Open Arms”. It illustrates one of the many keys to Celine Dion's success, she doesn’t sing clunkers. In the early 1980’s I used to make fun of Dave Birkenhagen’s album collection which included James Last and Journey. Today I’ll listen to Journey but I’m not going back to Ian Drury and the Blockheads very often.

During one of the songs, multiple videos of her singing the same song at different career stages played which made for an interesting effect. It was the James Bond medley won me over. From the opening twangy guitar riff, to punchy horns to great vocal renditions of “Goldfinger”, “Nobody Does it Better” and “Live and Let Die.” All were suited to her potent voice.

At times the full power of the staging became distracting. Dion does a duet with herself, is the video of her live or in the past? Wait! Who is that walking down the aisle with a microphone. Is that Dion  live or a standin? Way at the back of the stage is a dim hologram of Dion. It made sense after the fact. I figured out that holograms are at the back of the stage and look dull compared to the high definition closeup videos on giant screens at the front of the stage.

Next she announced that she was doing a duet with Stevie Wonder and for a few seconds the crowd though AWESOME! what a great opening night this will be. Instead we were treated to more visual trickery of Dion doing a “live” duet with a hologram of Wonder. This was offset by high definition video of him on very large side screens. Audiences have been trained to see live acts on big screens so the effect works quite well. Just remember that nothing is dimly lit in this show except for the holograms.

Dion grabbed everyone by the ears with her version of Eric Carmen's "All by Myself." She put her stamp on this classic. Michael Jackson is featured in a very entertaining interlude where three cellos rocked out on “Smooth Criminal”/”Beat It.” Dion followed up with “Ben” and “Man in the Mirror.” The show flagged a bit for me at this point. I couldn’t get over the fact that “Ben” is about a rat. Even a loose tie to rodents doesn’t belong in this extravaganza. Dion gave a very intimate rendition of Jacque Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas.” where she cried near the ending. This time I didn’t. I was intent on figuring out if her tears were real or added digitally, I feel like a jerk for over thinking this intimate moment.

Dion’s show is very well paced and it was time to pick up the tempo. Not a moment to soon (for me at least),  she busted out “River Deep Mountain High” which was great...except for her insistence on baton twirling a part of her microphone stand. Just because you can twirl a baton doesn’t mean that it needs to be worked into the show. To my knowledge, Tom Jones doesn’t pull out a yo-yo during “It’s Not Unusual.” Like I said, I did not want to like the show. In the end the music won me over.

The bottom line is that if Celine Dion could win me over, 90% of her audience is going to be blown away. In the end it is about the music. Celine Dion’s amazing voice, choice of songs, and great backing musicians all deliver. The understated (for Vegas) production allows the focus to be on great music. I would see this show again in a heartbeat.

Why Gold?

Here are a few reasons that investors are liking gold. Rob McEwen, founder of Goldcorp threw out a $5000/oz target three to four years out. He pointed out that Gold is used as insurance for bad governments."

Speaking of "bad" governments, Portugal's credit rating was knocked down a couple pegs by the Fitch Group. It is easier to see credit problems in smaller countries but the story is the same across much of the developed world.

Gold is a good store of value, especially in inflationary times. While not all inflation statistics can be trusted, I keep checking the Billion Prices Project @MIT and it looks like the annual rate of inflation is breaking out above the 3% level.

When a country's currency collapses a bunch of bad things happen. Bank accounts are frozen, credit and cards may be refused and people get desperate. Argentina's corralito is a recent example. The fact that the measures taken in Argentina seem unthinkable are precisely why it is prudent to plan for it. I've read very little so far in the role of precious metals during the corralito but I'll do some digging for a future post.

Gold is Going Going...

Fantastic action in the precious metals lately. I see bigger gains in silver but the Big Kahuna of the precious metals is gold. Every time gold makes a run, a new batch of converts joins the gold bug club. For non-economists (except the "Austrian" ones), the reasons to own gold are pretty simple. It's the rich man's silver ;)

One year gold price chart

30 Best Investment Blogs for Beginners

I'm haven't been pushing the envelope with www.JimLetourneau.com lately but I do get tons of stuff sent my way just because my site is filled with amazing insights, anectdotes, typos,  and great investment ideas. People comment regularly on my humility as well.

On rare occasions, the information thrown my way is actually useful. Today's post comes to us viawww.accountingdegree.com.

30 Best Investment Blogs for Beginners

1. The Online Investing AI Blog: George Ulmer blogs to help you retire after just 10 years of working. Recommended Post: The Truth About Education


2. Generation X Finance: By now, you should have a few years’ experience — if not a decade or two — in the workforce, and then you can turn to this blog for tips on accumulating wealth and paying off debt. Recommended Post: The Lost Decade of Investing


3. The Other 8 Hours: Let Robert Pagliarini help you be productive and fiscally responsible during the rest of the day that you’re not working or sleeping. Recommended Post: 5 Failures of Financial Planning (and How to Fix Them)


4. Money Smart: First Houston Capital president and CIO Richard Leader blogs for the Houston Chronicle about different types of investment strategies, and why they will — or won’t — work for you. Recommended Post: Why Momentum Investing is Popular


5. 20s Money: Kevin’s just 27 years old, but he’s already established a popular investment and financial planning blog for other 20-somethings, full of tips for understanding the economy, stock market and your own goals. Recommended Post: Some Interesting 2011 Predictions


6. Money Under 30: This popular blog was started by a young man who radically changed his financial situation, and whose excited to help you do the same, even if in you’re recently out of school. Recommended Post: Organize and Thrive: How Small Changes Can Better Your Finances Forever


7. Amateur Asset Allocator: Here’s a valuable blog for learning about investing, from the very basics to managing your own wealth. Recommended Post: Determine Your Risk Tolerance


8. Wise Investing: Larry Swedroe’s blog on CBS Money Watch includes very readable instructions for organizing your own investments while taking clues from the economy and stock market. Recommended Post: The Final 10 Rules for Being a Successful Investor


9. Five Cent Nickel: This popular PF blog features introductory pages for learning about savings rates, CD rates, mortgages and insurance, as well as a plethora of posts about budgeting and building wealth. Recommended Post: Dealing with Investment Stress


10. I Will Teach You to Be Rich: Ramit Sethi’s a real force in the online PF and business world, and his NYT best-selling book by the same name will teach you to be successful and financially independent, too. Recommended Post: Automate Your Personal Finances


11. rip lap: This life guide for 20 and 30-somethings is written by Steve, an ambitious and practical young man who shares smart recommendations for building wealth. Recommended Post: How to deal with a financial crisis


12. My Money Blog: This blogger shares personal information about investments and net worth, going back to 2006, supplementing the many posts on investments and savings.Recommended Post: You Have Some Money. Where Do You Put It?


13. Bargaineering: Find reviews and rate information of different investment, savings and banking plans. Recommended Post: You Still Need a Brick and Mortar Bank


14. Free Money Finance: Find out how to grow your own net worth, even if you think your PF skills are below average. Recommended Post: My Thoughts on Using Financial Planners (Or "Why I Don’t Go to a Fat Doctor")


15. Planting Dollars: The posts on this blog deal with mortgages, tips for building wealth and other PF and investing topics, but in an easy-to-read, encouraging style. Recommended Post: Go to College or Invest?


16. MoneyEnergy: This Canadian blog offers insight into the economy and markets of Canada, as well as international investment opportunities, like oil, gold and China. Recommended Post:The Highest Paying Dividend Stocks


17. Darwin’s Finance: Find a mix of everyday frugal living hacks and investment tips the author has been hounding since he was a teen. Recommended Post: How do Stock Options Work?


18. Get Rich Slowly: Practice long-term habits that lead to stable, secure wealth when you read this blog. Recommended Post: An introduction to money market accounts


19. Money Hacks: This blog covers everything about your money: earnings, savings, spending and investments. Recommended Post: Is the Economy Ever Going to Get Better?


20. Wise Bread: This blog reads more like an online PF magazine and helps you view your investments as part of a long-term, comprehensive financial plan for your whole life.Recommended Post: 7 Common Investing Mistakes


21. Joshua’s Beginner’s Investing Blog: If you want the basics of investments broken down for you — bonds, real estate investing, dividends, preferred stock and more — then read this blog.Recommended Post: New Investor’s Guide to Inflation and the Inflation Rate


22. Seeking Alpha: Seeking Alpha is an authoritative blog that offers recommendations, news and tips on managing your investments along with the stock market. Recommended Post:Cramer’s Mad Money: 21 Earnings to Watch


23. Investing Insights: This blog is published on Bloomberg Business Week’s page and focuses on new trends in the stock market and investing. Recommended Post: Dividends Move Into Full Swing; A Return To The Normal


24. The Digerati Life: A PF blog for getting what you want out of your job and your investments, The Digerati Life will allow you to maximize any money opportunity you pursue.Recommended Post: Stock Trading For Dummies: How To Profit From Trading


25. My 1st Million at 33: Discover ways to make your first million at an early age, too, while browsing charts and analyses of how the market is behaving. Recommended Post: Outlook for precious metals


26. Trader Mike: Get market recaps, trading and investing overviews from Blain, a trader who likes to keep things simple. Recommended Post: Tools of the "Trade" — How I Invest


27. Oblivious Investor: Here’s another blog that simplifies investing for low-maintenance wealth and financial management. Recommended Post: How Much Work is Do-It-Yourself Investing?


28. The Big Picture: Find videos, tools and posts that will clue you into the economy and financial markets. Recommended Post: 100 Most Respected Companies


29. Gannon on Investing: Use this blog to learn more about the markets in the UK as well as basic tips for starting out in investing. Recommended Post: Why I Don’t Invest in Chinese Stocks


30. The Shark Investor: Discover your potential for investment success when you commit to learning about the markets and educating yourself on basic, legal investment principles.Recommended Post: Is Investing a Big Fat Lie?

I can assure you that when they decide to make a list, they don't take the easy 3, 10 or 12 item approach. Check out these posts as well...

• 50 Intelligent LinkedIn Tips That Could Change Your Life


• 40 Best iPad Apps for Your Personal Finances

Geo Tutorial #2 - Mapping

This is the second Geo Tutorial from John Mark Staude's informative series on mineral exploration. Click here to view the first one on geochemical sampling.

I Told You So

I've watched the Academy Award winning Inside Job film a couple of times. I couldn't tell you who's leading the NHL in scoring but I knew the names of most of the people interviewed in the movie. Do you ever watch a game where your favorite player doesn't get nearly enough ice time? In the case of Inside Job, I thought that Frank Partnoy didn't get enough interview time.

I read his book, F.I.A.S.C.O., shortly after it came out and it certainly foreshadowed much of what happened in the financial sector. Partnoy excused himself from the trough early, documented his experience,  and then moved on to academic life. That may account for his lower profile.

He's published an Afterword to F.I.A.S.C.O. which has several quote worthy passages, including:

Our culture has become so infused with the gambling instinct that we afford investors only that bill of rights given a slot machine player: the right to pull the handle, the right to pick a different machine, the right to leave the casino, but not the right to a fair game.

Could a $100,000-a-year SEC investigator ever catch a $2,000,000-a-year derivatives salesman?

...and the capper...

I have just one last thing to add, for anyone who doubted my claim that obscure financial instruments called derivatives could cause the collapse of the global financial system. I told you so.

I suggest you read FIASCO Afterword.pdf

QOTD - Roger Ebert

The Company Men is a good movie. Not quite great, but infinitely watchable, especially the performances of Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper as... company men.

Employees of corporations are like free-ranging scavenger cells. When the corporation inhales in good times, they find themselves in a warm place with good nurture. When it exhales in bad times, they go spinning into the vast, indifferent world.

Roger Ebert

Weekend Homework - Geochemical Sampling

John Mark Staude's series of Geo Tutorials on mineral exploration are a must see. Before you buy a mining stock, take a few minutes and educate yourself on exactly what you're investing in.

Talking in Phoenix

I was the first speaker at the Phoenix Resource Investment Conference this morning. It turns out there was a discrepancy between the schedule posted on the conference website and the printed schedule handed out to attendees. I started my talk on the 4Ds of investing at 8:30 am. It turns out that the printed schedule had me speaking at 9:00 am. OOPS! There were a few minutes of dead air but Cambridge House President, Joe Martin took charge and started a Q&A session with me doing most of the "A" from 9:00AM onwards.

There seems to be lots of interest in fracturing technology so I got to use big words like compressibility, and proppant. I don't believe that a true "green" fracturing technology exists (would you like some propane bubbles in your water sir?) but there's certainly a growing demand for fracturing services.

I'm bullish on natural gas supply which forces me to bearish on natural gas prices. No amount of huffing and puffing is going to make the natural gas price rise substantially. Colder winters might. A few years ago it was unthinkable that North America would have a natural gas surplus. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) import terminals were being proposed. Now Canadian companies are partnering with China, Korea and Japan to export natural gas from the Horn River shale basin across the Pacific out of terminals in Prince Rupert and Kitimat. That's a big change in a short period of time and provides a great example of how technology can influence commodity prices.

Inflation for Real

Inflation statistics have become a source of much controversy. There is a general consensus that the current methodology of measuring inflation in the US is underreporting what is happening out in the real world. Enter the Billion Prices Project @ MIT. They cleverly check prices of items online and track the price changes. This data is more timely and probably less biased than official government statistics.

Daily Price Online Price Index

It will be interesting to see if the run up of prices into Valentine's Day (where there is an annual bubble in rose prices) keeps rising. Inflation would not be unexpected given commodity price increases. Keep your eye in this indicator as it leads the official statistics.

"The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"
Winston Churchill

Saskatchewan is Kind of Like Your Sister

This little profanity laced cartoon taps the pulse of junior resource stock investors. Of course once they start their investment plan expecting 10-15 baggers, it is time to think about how much further this amazing resource rally can go. For reference, I show the TSX Venture Index chart which has been a happy sandbox for investors... so far.

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via Paul Kedrosky (who manages to keep his CanCon levels pretty high).

Global Alcohol Consumption

Here's a map that might help you plan your next vacation. To my pattern seeking eye, it appears that hard drinking ways never caught on in the equatorial regions. I thought Iceland might have made "red state" status as the only time I visited, the airport bathroom floor was littered with mini-alcohol bottles. Naturally I extrapolated this brief moment into thinking that the entire country was full of boozers*.

Alcohol Consumption by Country

*I was clearly wrong to assume this. They were too busy studying to be investment bankers to be drinking excessively.

Kaiser on Speculating in Mining Juniors

While I don't restrict my investment focus to resource juniors, I do evaluate them on a daily basis. John Kaiser is always worth listening to when it comes to speculating in mining stocks.

In the beginning of this interview he explains the NI 43-101 and differences between resources/reserves and investors/speculators. Later on he discusses rare earth elements.

Geek at the Beach

I'm starting to prefer streaming music as opposed to listening to whatever I have downloaded on my iPhone. Of course that requires a solid wi-fi connection but the closer you are to the ocean, the further away you are from the signal. Maybe I should just get a transistor radio and make the best of it. Listening to the waves crashing was a pretty nice replacement.

[gallery]

Mexican Crime Deaths

Mexico has a hard-earned a reputation for gory drug violence and this often worries people with friends or family travelling or living in there. People tend to forget that if you're not in a drug gang, you have a much lower chance of perishing in a drug gang shooting. Of course a stray bullet might get you, but so might a falling coconut. So for the benefit of my Mom, who likes to worry, I'm posting this interactive map from The Economist. We are in a white area so we're pretty safe...

How Bazaar

Dan Ariely manages to buy something in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar without drinking tea. He makes a very good point about the use of calculators in negotiations.

Negotiation@Grand Bazaar from serendipity on Vimeo.

Natural Gas - The Big Picture

Reasoned commentary from the AAPG's Scott Tinker on the future of natural gas. If a moderate view sees a 20-30 year supply of natural gas, just think of the supply upside if the supply bulls (price bears?) are right.

“Even when you look at it conservatively, the resource is there; it may not be robust enough to last forever as the most bullish people are saying, but it’s there,” Tinker emphasized. “We could see 20 to 30 years of natural gas production from shale gas systems and, in that sense, it makes a good bridge (to the future) fuel.”

AAPG Explorer