We’re ending type 2 diabetes.

Chamath, we’d like you to join us.

My name is John West and I am the Chief Development Officer at SciMar Ltd., a Canadian life sciences company on the brink of changing the medical paradigm in the prevention, detection, and treatment of type 2 diabetes after 30+ years of research. We’re even testing a pill that is designed to reverse type 2 diabetes. It’s kind of a big deal.

The letter below is for Chamath Palihapitiya, the CEO of Social Capital. We believe that he will be very interested in what we are doing. He is deeply concerned about type 2 diabetes and is passionate about solving big problems in novel ways. Us too.

If you know Chamath, please share this link with him. If you are Chamath, I am so glad you found us! Please read on.

Hello Chamath,

My father-in-law, Dr. W. Wayne Lautt, discovered a previously unknown hormone years ago that will change humanity’s understanding of metabolic health and type 2 diabetes.

I’m on a team working to bring his science to market to save millions of lives and billions of dollars.

Chamath, I admire your passion, your world view, and your approach to business. I think in SciMar you will find a company that shares your values and your drive to solve hard problems.

Let me tell you a little more about the hormone that Dr. Lautt discovered and the company we have built around it.

We have developed a pill that stimulates the production of the hormone hepatalin, thereby correcting nutrient partitioning and ending type 2 diabetes. In the academic literature, hepatalin is known as hepatic insulin-sensitizing substance, or “the HISS hormone”.

When this hormone—we named it hepatalin—is missing or is in short supply, the result is obesity, followed by type 2 diabetes. While the current type 2 diabetes paradigm is exclusively focused on the pancreas and the insulin it secretes, the hormone we’re talking about is produced by the liver.

Dr. Lautt’s 30+ years of basic research has resulted in entirely new ways to diagnose, prevent, and stop type 2 diabetes. This includes a pill taken before each meal to stimulate the production of hepatalin. With adequate hepatalin, the body partitions nutrients effectively (the right amount of excess glucose is taken up by muscle; the right amount by fat).

When hepatalin and insulin are in the right balance, type 2 diabetes cannot develop. We believe that hepatalin is the missing link in a more complete understanding of human metabolism.

SciMar is family-led and investor-inspired. The company was founded in 2009 by Dr. W. Wayne Lautt, his wife, Melanie Lautt, and their son, Mick Lautt. The company has attracted over 60 private investors to date.

Frustrated by the clunky systems for bringing discoveries to market through academia (at least in Canada), we incorporated SciMar in 2009. Our family funded the work, secured the IP from the University of Manitoba, and patented a series of discoveries. I joined the executive team in 2015, and we all worked full-time without pay until 2018 when we closed our initial seed round with private investors, mostly from Manitoba. We are honoured that key members of our original science team returned to help us take this research over the finish line.

Our goal is to change global health. To do that, we are in the process of completing our research and preparing our next clinical trials. And then we need to scale up to get the message and the medicine out to the world.

This team is driven to a higher purpose—to advance science, to solve a global epidemic. We will not stop until we end type 2 diabetes.

Aside from the obvious financial returns that the “next insulin” will generate, our initial and subsequent investors joined us because they embrace the mission.

It is important to our family that our next major investors have a track record of using their wealth to improve the world. I believe that SciMar’s mission and vision align beautifully with the mission and vision of Social Capital.

It is important to me, personally, to have an investor who sees the bigger picture, someone who will want to keep up with the audacity, ambition, and budget of what we have in store for SciMar and the world.

When Banting and Best discovered insulin, they opened the door to a century of powerful therapies for people living with diabetes. There is an opportunity here to define how the next 100 years of health and wellness will be measured, delivered, and funded.

We have chosen to start at home in Manitoba, knowing that the world will notice when we make progress in solving the type 2 diabetes epidemic within our rural, remote, and Indigenous populations.

I think you might want to be part of what happens next. Let’s talk! My contact information is below.

Thanks for your time, Chamath.

Sincerely,

John West, Chief Development Officer
SciMar Ltd.

Twitter: @JohnEddWest
John.West@scimar.ca
Direct line: 1-888-CHAMATH (1-888-242-6284)

Click above to stream or click here to listen on your preferred podcast platform

Want to know more? Visit our websites.

SciMar Ltd.

This is the mothership. Here you will learn more about our novel science, our people, and our business.

Wellness Transformation Network

This is our community outreach initiative that will serve as our clinical trials platform. We have partners from industry, the non-profit sector, and the Indigenous community. We’re even working on designing this as a Social Impact Bond project for Manitoba, because we plan to change community health. We’ll be launching in the fall of 2021.

NuPa

We already have a nutraceutical product on the market! It’s SciMar NuPa Daily and it’s designed to protect the production of the hormone we discovered.

Inside the Breakthrough

Our science history podcast is a hit. For a while we were the #1 science podcast (and #12 overall) in Canada on the Apple charts. Each episode shares a bit more about our research. Our host is Dan Riskin, former co-host of Discovery Channel’s Daily
Planet and a regular guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.