Healthcare investing with Hashan de Silva

I had a fascinating chat with Hashan de Silva, also available on Spotify and iTunes.

Hashan covers his new fund KP Rx and his extensive background in healthcare, starting with a stint in medicine and his first job in industry commercialising drugs at Eli Lilly. 

At the time Eli Lilly was launching Byetta, their first GLP-1. 

There have been many drugs found to reduce weight, but these all turned out to cause serious problems, from heart attacks to meth addiction.

The curious thing about GLP-1s is that this time around, the catastrophic side effects have not shown up. In fact, the opposite: long term trials show significant improvements in health.

Hashan’s early investors include some of Australia’s most successful healthcare entrepreneurs: Patrick Davies (Chairman of Neuren), Lou Panaccio (director of Sonic) and Dr Glenn Haifer.

Hashan is on the board of Curvebeam AI which is entering a pivotal moment as the firm expands its installed base ahead of software modules set to be released in CY2025. 

He is also a director of Syntara, a local drug development company. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for Syntara as they do their chemistry in house and design their own drugs in Sydney, where they are world leaders in oxidase enzyme chemistry. Quite refreshing compared to the repurposed, reformulated or otherwise unwanted drugs that seem to make it onto the ASX.

Syntara has four programs in the clinic:

1. Myelofibrosis: Their main program targets this rare bone marrow cancer. Results from this trial will read out later this year, and if successful, it would be the first disease-modifying treatment for the condition. Transactions in this space have been over US$1.5 billion, while Syntara is a ~US$45 million company.

2. Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS): Running Phase 2 trials funded by the German government.

3. Parkinson's Disease: A Phase 2 program funded by a UK charity.

4. Scar Prevention: A Phase 2-stage program in collaboration with the renowned Professor Fiona Wood in Perth.

This is one of our positions I haven’t talked much about - mostly as there will soon be a binary readout which will move it significantly in either direction.  

We then discussed to Skin2Neuron, which has apparently cured a small number of dogs with Alzheimers, by taking cells from hair follicles, inducing them into a stem-cell state with Yamanaka factors, then implanting them in the brain where they have self-organised and led to visible recovery in memory function. 

Dogs are the best animal model for Alzheimers as they develop it naturally. Most animals need to have the disease state induced or engrafted, and are thus frustratlingly limited, albeit most would argue better than nothing. 

Hopefully one day this kind of work is done with digital models of human biology and we can spare the mammals. 

Finally, we do a quick round on some local companies like Clarity and Telix.

I am sure you’ll find this one interesting!

Michael

ps Hashan can be contacted here: [email protected]