Want to help cure type I and type II diabetes?

I've known Ron Evans at the Salk Institute for many many years. His artificial islet cells can eradicate type I and type II diabetes permanently with one injection. Here's why I need your help.

Steve Kirsch

Aug 16

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Executive summary

Ron Evans is a highly credible diabetes researcher at the Salk Institute who invented an “artificial islet cell” that produces insulin when glucose is elevated.

Due to the pandemic, the VC-funded company created to follow through on this great technology folded.

I want to get this company restarted. This will help impact the lives of millions of people, including me. Had this venture not been impacted by COVID, his technology might have saved my vision.

Background

Ron’s team at Salk developed an “artificial islet” cell that can be injected into the body in a one time operation to supplement/replace the beta cells in the pancreas that make insulin in response to an increase in blood sugar. They know how to “cloak it” so the body doesn’t reject it. They don’t inject it into the pancreas because that’s too risky, but the islet cells can be injected in other organs.

This has been tested in animals and it works.

They got VC funding for a private venture, Diagon Therapeutics, in 2020. The company was founded by Lou Tartaglia. The company no longer exists.

See this article from 2022 where Kris Elverum, the CEO is quoted:

A 2020 study from molecular biologist Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, for example, showed that inducing epigenetic changes including upregulation of the checkpoint protein programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) prevented killing of human stem-cell-derived islets in immunocompetent mice. According to Elverum, Diagon, which counts Evans among its scientific cofounders, plans to build on that finding that a complex epigenetic network is critical to immune evasion, but he declined to discuss specifics of the company’s gene-editing strategy.

Because everything was shut down during COVID, they had to abandon ship. Elverum subsequently transitioned to AIRNA as the CEO, where he raised a $30 million initial financing led by ARCH Venture Partners.

Evan’s work was approved for NIH grant, but the money was never paid out due to lack of funding from Congress.

So this technology has been gathering dust instead of saving lives.

I called him a few days ago just to check in and learned all this.

Ron is confident it will work and clearly the VC investors did too; the venture was not abandoned due to any issues with the science.

With your help, we can pool our funds and get the venture restarted again with a new team.

Take action here

If you are a VC and this looks interesting, or you are a private investor who invests in startups, this should be a very good investment. Please fill out the interest form and I’ll send you the pitch deck.

If you are in biotech and think this would be an exciting venture to help launch, please let me know as well by filling out the interest form and I’ll send you the pitch deck.

If things go as expected, you’ll help save lives and get a good return on your investment.