Brain Surgery Dropout Chronicles: Ebola Edition, Week 1

 

I've decided to title the Lab Notes "Brain Surgery Dropout Chronicles: Ebola Edition." As you may or may not know, I left a budding career in academic neurosurgery in order to start my company OncoSynergy because I wanted to help more patients, faster (particularly those with the brain cancer, glioblastoma). So rather than endure 7 years of verbal and psychological abuse as a neurosurgery resident (a large proportion of which would be ironically spent operating on the very boring non-brain vertebral bones, i.e., spine), I decided that time would be better spent developing an idea I already had for a novel class of drugs for treating cancer. #DUH

Back in pre-med days I wouldn't have ever imagined my career trajectory would span from brain surgery to startup founder and CEO to rogue ebola researcher. But in reality, things have come full circle for me. I remember devouring Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" as an undergrad in 1994. I was so obsessed with ebola that I abruptly switched my major from biology to microbiology. But when I realized I wasn't going to be able to actually study ebola as an undergrad I quickly lost interest. This wasn't such a bad thing though because it lead me to discover my first true passion in life, neuroscience. 

Fast forward 20 years....

So, you see, the launch of the #EBOLAproject last Friday was a dream come true. We raised over 15% of the goal in less than 3 days. Thank you to all our backers so far and please continue to spread the good word. As part of the launch, I DIY'd a press release that I spent 4 hours e-mailing to various outlets and reporters locally, nationally, and internationally. The response was gratifying including a home page feature on Fierce Biotech written by Emily Mullin and a great article from Ron Leuty in the San Francisco Business Times. I even gave my first ever live radio interview on KCBS on Saturday afternoon, 8/23 (my wife recorded it and I'll post it shortly)!

However... 

I was also interviewed via phone by Stephanie Lee from the San Francisco Chronicle. I knew something wasn't quite right from her tone and line of questioning; as feared, she decided to take a negative spin on the project with the support of various cynical quotes from, Warner Greene, the Director of the UCSF Gladstone Institute of Virology (who doesn't know anything about me, OS2966, or OncoSynergy) #PARTYPOOPER. The article was dominated by misquotes from me and the suggestion that we were "playing on emotions" to raise money for the company coffers rather than the ebola project. Frankly, I'm embarrassed for both Stephanie and Warner. A simple google search would have told them we are a well-funded startup for our stage (privately raised nearly $4M from investors thus far for our cancer programs) and that $10K is a chunk of change, but doesn't do much for us except enable us (in partnership with Experiment, Science Exchange, and YOU, the public) to further overextend ourselves (#STARTUPGRINDING) by taking on an extracurricular project seeking a treatment for a disease currently ravaging west Africa. 

We're just a startup, standing in front of the public, asking them to crowdfund for ebola. #NOTTINGHILL

But, in all seriousness, I wanted to end on a high note by announcing that we will donate any excess proceeds to the WellBody Alliance to support the emergency ebola response on the ground in Sierra Leone.

Folks, we are entering the typical valley of death in crowdfunding (end of week 1) and I want to make sure we keep the momentum going. Please continue to share our project on social media and e-mail your friends and contacts to join the adventure: "Can we defeat ebola with an experimental cancer drug?" 

–Shawn