CEO of drug research company EGeen International Kalev Kask (pictured) discloses the brutal thinking of the capitalists working in the pharmaceutical industry. 

Kask, who is Estonian, lives in Silicon Valley in the US and manages the EGeen international business – drug research on Europe’s eastern “front” from Finland to Turkey. EGeen that was founded in 2001, earned a profit last year and had 50 employees.

What do you need for pharmaceutical research?
Patients with a suitable group of illnesses. There is an oblast in the Ukraine that is twice the size of Estonia. There’s a hospital there that is as large as all Estonian hospitals put together. We give medications to people and monitor what happens. Whether or not there’s pain and what type of pain it is, for example. You also need clients. Because if you don’t have clients, you have nothing. Whichever number you multiply by zero, the result will still be zero.

What kinds of illnesses are being treated today?
Almost all kinds. But no pharmaceutical company wants to see people get better. We need a cure that can be sold to a patient on a permanent basis until they’re 80!

A cure for Alzheimer’s, for example – the Ukrainians say: “Babuška ohuijela.” In the US, however, it’s an insanely big market – 30-40 billion dollars! Young people are thinking: “What should I do about grandma, she’s making no sense and can’t remember anything – I’ll buy her medication!”
Medications are expensive, yet people do buy them in the US. Take the pill for the HIV virus, for example ($65 000 per month for a treatment!) – everyone here is gay and they have more money than sense. No one visits backstreet soothsayers or mediums here.

When you’re producing a drug that will postpone death for the seriously ill for even three moths, you have a market right away. Some illnesses are chronic. If someone, for example, is stupid and wants to take medication that will make them smart, it won’t really make them smarter. It will only alleviate the situation.

Why does EGeen conduct pharmaceutical research in Eastern Europe but not in the US, for example?
Due to bureaucracy. Lawyers have made things too difficult in the US. Do this and you face these threats, do that and that’s what lies ahead – the patient dies first before they can read through the contract!

Who pays for drug research?
The American Drug Administration dictates 70% of all this business. Americans pay for drug development in the entire world.

Which illnesses is there no cure for yet?
There’s not much being done about medication for Parkinson’s disease, for example, because it kills “only” 5 000 000 people a year in the US. If you go and ask someone money for a Parkinson’s medication, they will tell you to leave!

20 million people are suffering from depression – now we are talking! It’s a cruel world – no one wants to work on a cure for some tropical illness. Malaria, for example – the capitalists want to know what the relevant market value is. Well, 20 million people every year die of malaria! No, I was asking about the market value, don’t make things complicated!

There are rumors that pharmaceutical companies encode a new disease into their medication. You take medication, for example, and it will cure you of one thing but will introduce another illness. Your liver will be damaged, for example, which gives you a reason to go to the drug store again.
I presume you’re talking about alcohol – the best cure of all! Actually, if there’s a slightest liver problem associated with taking a certain drug, the medication will be removed from the market straight away.

What about Viagra – is it a growing market?
Viagra is no fir oil but the market is full. There are a limited number of men and three very similar drugs are available. If you have a great plan, I can take a look but I wouldn’t think there’s anything big coming up in this area.

What kind of alternative medicine do you believe in?
Exercise and keep away from medication! The Koran is a good alternative as well if you’re happy with that. We only live once.
Alcohol helps with depression. We talk about medication, yet 500 million people are drunk around the world at any given time and they’re not worried about their health.

They feel twice as bad the next day, though!
Sure, but you do have headache medication. At some point, Roche had a drug that made your head clear just like that. But it was not allowed in the market because its side effects included poor coordination. They were afraid the drug will make the whole world into a big mess like Tallinn-Tartu highway: let me at it, men! But your hands and legs can’t keep up!

How many drug researchers, similar to EGeen, are there in the market? 
There’s a lot. At first, it was difficult for us to find clients. Now we have an existing client base and references and that feeds itself.

Large pharmaceutical companies are letting people go because they cannot keep a massive army of employees. They will only keep their top management and marketing – the rest will move on to companies like us.

EGeen is for sale. Who’s interested in buying it?
At some point, some Indian guys came to take a look. There’s a boom over there, the guys have easy money to spend. But from our perspective it’s not as simple as just selling and wiping your hand of it – we have to consider what will happen next. 

We’ll probably find a buyer from Asia. ¬Chinamen have money to swim in it. But I wonder what will Estonians, racist as they are, do, having a Chinaman as their boss? Or worse – a Saudi! Everyone’s welcome here, though!

How much is EGeen worth?
How much are you willing to pay? I value this company very high, there’s no point in bringing small money to the table.

Has EGeen thought about entering the stock exchange?
We looked into it but there’s no point. The value of publicly traded biotechnology companies today depends on how successful their research is. Publicly traded companies have to produce reports and press notices all the time. When you spend 60% of your time on that, it will eat into your profits. We don’t need that.

What will happen to EGeen after it is sold?
I’ll probably get the boot! But I have a plan B for such occasion. The rest is no longer my concern.

You’ll be financially secure then and can concentrate on playing golf, for example?
I don’t play golf, I play basketball. I’ll play golf when I’m disabled.

ABOUT

EGeen brings together US risk capitalists and big Estonian businessmen.
EGeen is an undertaking that was established in 2001 and engages in clinical drug research in areas such as cancer, urology, neurology, various internal diseases etc.
The company’s headquarters is in California in the US and it has subsidiaries in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the Ukraine.
EGeen’s ownership circle includes risk funds such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson (one of the owners of which is Estonian Steve Jürvetson), Oxford Bioscience Partners, New Markets Fund, Baltcap and Biobank Technology Ventures.
Through Lõhmus Haavel & Viisemann, Estonian businessmen Andres Liinat, Rain Lõhmus, Neinar Seli, Urmas Sõõrumaa, Tarmo Sumberg, Koit Uus et al also have small holdings in the outfit.
EGeen’s holding company was the owner and major donor of the Estonian Genome Project in 2001-2004. Investors placed more than 70 million EEK in the Genome Project plus 50 million EEK in loans. 
By 2004, the Gene Bank held data from 10 000 Estonian gene donors, yet there was no agreement between the owners and management of the Genome Project as to what should be done with the data next. EGeen withdrew from the project.
EGeen’s clients foremost include biotechnology companies from the US and Europe. Currently, research is being done in relation to ten drugs. The most interesting of these is research for a therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer. If the relevant cancer is detected at an early stage, this drug should mobilize the patients own immune system to fight the cancer and prevent or at least slow down further development of the disease. The patients’ life expectancy and quality of life would gain from this considerably.