Thinking Differently About Ebola Virus Disease: WBB Securities’ Steve Brozak

What do you get when you combine a top-ranked industry analyst with a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Marine Corp.? You get Steve Brozak, who brings his one-of-a kind perspective on the intricacies of Ebola virus disease to this interview with The Life Sciences Report. His military background, combined with 20 years as a biotech and medtech analyst, has allowed the WBB Securities cofounder to develop a reasoned perspective on how West Africa’s Ebola epidemic might be humanely halted. Brozak also mentions small-cap names that could considerably enhance investors’ portfolios.

The Life Sciences Report: Steve, you wanted to address Ebola virus disease (EVD) from a socioeconomic point of view. Please give us your thoughts on the stress EVD could put on healthcare systems in the U.S. and worldwide.

Steve Brozak: Let me start by paraphrasing a quote that I heard from a very smart person. Ebola is a horrific disease, and because of that, unfortunately, it is the first made-for-television disease that we’ve witnessed. It will not be that long before we see some major Hollywood studio make a movie about the events we’re looking at on the news today.

But I don’t think people who are watching—and certainly not a large part of the investing community—really understand EVD or its ramifications. That really is the most insidious part of this disease—the fact that it is not understood.

TLSR: How is EVD not understood?

SB: What people don’t understand is that it is impractical to carry out mass treatment protocols here in the U.S. You cannot set up every single facility in this country to deal with Ebola. Even setting up specific centers to deal with something like Ebola is impractical. It is far more practical, far more efficacious, far more efficient and far more humane to deal with Ebola at its center, which everyone acknowledges is in West Africa. That’s what people don’t understand, unfortunately. Instead, the media have been reporting on facilities in Dallas, Atlanta and New York, and making observations about the patients who are being treated there.

“NeoStem Inc. will announce results from its Phase 2b PreSERVE-AMI trial on Nov. 17.”

The reality right now is that we are at a critical juncture. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; Doctors Without Borders) has been the only organization that has been coherent in providing healthcare infrastructure in West Africa. However, MSF is depleted to the point where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) can no longer stand by. CDC is actively recruiting people to assist with the MSF mission in Africa, but this is not a one-for-one fit, because we are not very well versed in this kind of venture. We are entering into uncharted territory that, candidly, gives me great cause for concern.

TLSR: Aside from the vicious nature of the disease and the fact that some healthcare workers have been infected, what is it that gives you great concern right now?

SB: I’m concerned when I see, in newspapers, online or on TV, people making assumptions that there are drugs or products available today that will save the day. That is simply not factual. Yes, there are noteworthy products, but there is a very unfortunate dichotomy in that the products we know a lot about don’t really work, and we don’t have enough of the products that seem to be efficacious. Everyone is finger-pointing, but the reality is that we are not addressing the issues that we have to address.

TLSR: Steve, you have said we really do know how to manage viral disease outbreaks like this one. What is the evidence for that? Give me an example.

SB: Having covered pandemics and epidemics now for ten years, I would say that, for the first time, we actually understand how to control an outbreak like this, and it’s only because of significant government spending for other threats.

“Omeros Corp.’s Omidria is FDA-approved, proven sterile and safe, and reimbursable by payers.”

For example, take H5N1, or bird flu. A decade ago, everyone said that bird flu was going to come to the U.S., but it didn’t. We still set up and retooled our vaccine systems in the U.S. in response to the threat. If we hadn’t done that, imagine where we would be today. H1N1, or swine flu, literally became a pandemic in 2009, and in 2014 it is firmly entrenched in the influenza ecosystem here in the U.S. We caught this problem at the last possible moment—H1N1 became the first instance where we could understand a threat and stop it using the infrastructure our government invested in. That was possible because our government invested in a diagnostic mechanism in preparation of bird flu that allowed us to check for unusual viruses. It was the surveillance tool we developed for H5N1 that saved us from H1N1. Today, when you get your regular seasonal flu vaccine, you receive protection from H1N1. All this was possible because of government funding.

TLSR: Would you briefly mention a few companies offering some promising ideas to combat EVD?

SB: I’ll go over companies that are interesting, and I’ll also explain the shortcomings of each. We need to understand the limitations and strengths of each technology, because Ebola is not an isolated incident. It is unfortunate, but predictable, that there will be more outbreaks, and we have to be prepared. That is the reality.