There is an old story about Michael Faraday, a self-educated man and a lowly lab assistant, taking a bold risk and presenting his latest invention to the prestigious and aristocratic Royal Academy of Sciences.
In 1821, he dangled a wire over an electromagnet. He connected a battery to it, and looked across his skeptical audience as the wire revolved in a circular motion around an iron nail with a copper wire coiled around it.
On that day nearly two centuries ago, Faraday demonstrated that Newtonian motion doesn’t always hold true, and that a previously undiscovered force was at work.
After the presentation, the Prime Minister walked up, incredulous and haughty we can assume, and asked, “What good could this invention be?”
Faraday, knowing his audience, fired right back, “Why, Prime Minister, someday you can tax it!”
Faraday’s invention and discoveries became the basis of electrical generators, transformers, motors, and fundamental physics.
I wish the story was entirely true. That presentation happened, that we know. The conversation with the Prime Minister apparently did not. All that changes is the wit and wisdom in the moment though, not the truth behind it. That I can live with, for the sake of a good tale.
These technologies, so simple these days that most people paradoxically don’t have a clue how they work, revolutionized the world and created countless trillions of dollars in economic growth… and yes, taxes.
It took centuries — along with an untold amount of blood, sweat, and tears — for the basic theories to be developed into the mature, practical, and commercial applications we have now, and we can’t even imagine life without them.
And right now, we’re on the cusp of another practically ancient theory finally reaching its full potential, sparking previously unimaginable economic activity, and irreversibly changing the way we live.
“Magic Bullets”
Way back in 1900, Paul Ehrlich developed an idea he called Zauberkugel, or the “magic bullet.”
Back when people thought radium-laced water was a cure-all and mercury injections were used to treat syphilis, he hypothesized that it would be possible to kill specific microbes without affecting anything else in the body.
In the early 1890s, Ehrlich was working with another professor, Emil von Behring. Behring had been investigating antibacterial agents and discovered a diphtheria antitoxin.
Both men were nominated for the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901. Behring won it.
Then Ehrlich was almost driven off his path. From Behring’s work, Ehrlich understood that antibodies could attack pathogens without any harmful effect on the body.
He believed that these were the “magic bullets” for specific microbes that he was looking for. But further research revealed that antibodies sometimes failed to kill microbes. Why this was so, he couldn’t know at the time, but something was clearly off, and he abandoned his “magic bullet” idea for a time.
Then a pair of discoveries combined to cement his role as a founding father of modern medicine.
First there was Ehrlich’s discovery of an arsenic-based compound that was effective against malaria in lab animals. Then he learned that another pair of researchers isolated a specific bacterium as the cause of syphilis.
Exposing the bacteria to his compound killed it, and led to the first effective treatment for syphilis known as Salvarsan. He had found the first “magic bullet.”
It undoubtedly solved the problems caused by doctors injecting mercury into their patients to treat the disease as well. Two birds, one stone. Or one “magic bullet.” Whatever.
Salvarsan was the first chemotherapeutic treatment in the world, and it was a major factor behind Ehrlich winning the Nobel Prize in 1908.
Technology Catches Up
Since then, pharmaceuticals of all sorts have taken off, but the technology behind their discovery has been rudimentary and scattershot.
It took perfect timing and a big dose of serendipity for Ehrlich to make the discovery that made him famous and saved countless lives. Modern medicine has stumbled into most of its discoveries the same way.
Sir Alexander Fleming famously discovered and isolated the antibacterial properties of penicillin molds by using improperly sanitized petri dishes while growing staphylococci bacteria. That won him the 1945 Nobel Prize.
Over time, techniques were refined with computer modeling, efficiency, and precision, but it was still trial and error.
Millions of variations of promising — but ultimately worthless — chemicals have been thrown away at incredible cost, with only a relatively minuscule few turning into the lifesaving drugs we know today.
Doctors, scientists, and researchers of all types — even Nobel Prize winners — have almost exclusively found Ehrlich’s “magic bullets” by firing as many random “bullets” as fast as they can.
The technology wasn’t there to customize the therapies they were developing for the target they were aiming at.
That is changing right now.
More Like Magic Keys
Ehrlich was right all along about antibodies, but instead of “magic bullets” he should have called what he was looking for “magic keys.”
A whole new breed of immunotherapies has become possible because cutting-edge laboratories are creating custom-built antibodies.
They match specific chemical sequences, proteins, and amino acids on pathogens and malignant cells of cancer. Just like how a key has a specific sequence of notches and angles to engage the cylinder.
We’re seeing an explosion of these immunotherapy drugs hitting the market, targeting everything from the deadliest pathogens and cancers to everyday issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, and joint pain.
Over 50% of therapies in development right now are antibody-based, and the $90 billion sector is expected to balloon to $245 within just six years.
The next revolution, worth hundreds of billions a year, and trillions over time, is finally emerging. It took over a century for technology to catch up, but Ehrlich’s theory is finally reaching its full potential.
Outsider Club Founder and President Nick Hodge has been following the sector for years, and just introduced a new way to capitalize on the rapid commercialization of this breakthrough to his readers. I’ll let the expert explain it further.
