Pat Garandi has spent a life trying to find the cures and treatments for rare diseases. His company, SanRocco Therapeutics, developed a superior gene therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease. You would think that this would be greeted as great news, but instead it landed him in court and on the front pages of the New York Times.
00:01:11.940Now, if you met Patrick Garandi, you would not know that he is a biomedical company executive
00:01:17.860who has spent a life trying to find the cures and treatments for rare diseases.
00:01:24.140You might think that he was a very hip jazz musician or an A-list celebrity.
00:01:30.700But Pat Garandi is a respected, well-known leader in the field of rare diseases.
00:01:34.840He's traveled all over the world counseling medical centers on the strategies to be most effective when it comes to rare diseases.
00:01:42.180He's devoted his life to curing sickle cell disease and thalassemia after his own son, Rocco, was diagnosed with thalassemia as a child.
00:01:54.340An early pioneer in the field of gene therapy, Pat Garandi has fought big pharma corruption every step of the way in the court of public opinion,
00:02:04.000as well as in the courts, to save his own son and others from these debilitating conditions.
00:02:10.840It's an honor to have this courageous fighter with us today in the Stone Zone.
00:02:27.600So once you identify the therapy that creates a genetic disease, once you know what that gene is,
00:02:36.780then there's a possibility of delivering that gene to enough stem cells in a patient's body to where the patient defeats the disease or is no longer symptomatic.
00:02:48.240And you can do that either by changing the gene, which is called gene replacement, which is what we do,
00:02:56.320or you can edit the gene, which is what CRISPR does.
00:03:03.320So your company, San Rocco Therapeutics, developed a superior gene therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease.
00:03:14.300You would think that this would be greeted as great news, but instead it landed you in court and in the front pages of the New York Times.
00:04:54.520So, Bluebird Bio said, you know, in 2013, after they had sabotaged our product, basically, we weren't aware of that yet.
00:05:05.780But they said that they would treat patients for around $750,000 per patient.
00:05:11.120In 2017, when we realized what had happened through discovery in the court system, we went after them.
00:05:19.120And in 2020, we finally settled out of court, and we were getting back into the business of curing patients.
00:05:28.160We were the first, actually, in patients in 2012 in a clinical trial in the United States.
00:05:34.540Bluebird Bio, however, got approved in December of 2023.
00:05:40.920And instead of charging $750,000 because they didn't have any competition, which was us at one time, so they charged $3.1 million per patient.
00:05:52.600We can treat the patients for $800,000.
00:05:59.220To what extent are taxpayers picking up the tab for these treatments?
00:06:03.320So, there's basically 90% of all thalassemic and sickle cell disease patients are on some form of Medicare or Medicaid.
00:06:14.760To treat a patient with gene therapy costs the company, costs my company, excuse me, costs my company somewhere around $500,000.
00:06:27.980Just for hospital costs and for the creation of the product.
00:06:33.920So, after you add overhead for the company, et cetera, et cetera, like I said, I promised Bobby Kennedy that we'd keep the price under $1 million per patient for the next 10 years.
00:06:45.520But, however, like I said, Bluebird Bio for gene replacement charges $3.1 million.
00:06:51.700And CRISPR, which is gene editing, and it cures the exact same patients, is charging $2.2 million per patient.
00:07:00.120So, if you multiply the difference between $3.1 million per patient and $800,000 per patient, which we believe is the fair price, is the right price, times 100,000 patients,
00:07:12.720the taxpayer is basically theoretically defrauded out of about $230 billion.
00:07:19.120Yeah, that's the back of the envelope number I came up with.
00:07:22.360At some point, you notified New York Attorney General Letitia James about this precarious situation regarding children in New York State with sickle cell anemia.
00:07:37.600Yeah, so, in 2018, we basically, after we did discovery in our court case, we realized that there was this horrible criminal sabotage that happened, including insider trading.
00:07:51.940So, Bluebird Bio traded up to a $12 billion market cap that has raised a total of $4.2 billion in the marketplace.
00:08:01.400And they were getting ready to treat patients with what we believe was a less safe drug because they were using our first generation of our drug.
00:08:31.860We brought her all of the court evidence, which pointed to criminal activity to sabotage our product and to boost the cost of gene therapy for sickle cell disease.
00:08:49.640We recently were pushing back and forth all the way until 2024.
00:08:57.180And the answer was always the same, that she didn't have the resources to go after the people who were costing the lives of sickle cell disease children.
00:09:13.420I have to ask you, as a high school dropout, how did you assemble a team to take on Big Pharma in the way you have?
00:09:21.980Well, initially, I started investing all of my own family money.
00:09:25.580Like I said, I was a rags to riches story on Oprah Winfrey.
00:09:28.380I was in Playgirl magazine as one of America's most overall bachelors with Magic Johnson and Sylvester Stallone.
00:09:35.320So once my son was diagnosed, I stuck all my own money.
00:09:39.380I stopped trading and I stuck all my own money into curing the disease.
00:09:44.800And by doing that, I won a lot of heroes and a lot of people who thought that I was a hero and a lot of people who want to collaborate, including some of the top researchers in the United States, including the head of gene and cell therapy at the NIH, Dr.
00:10:00.520Dr. John Tisdale, an incredible person.
00:10:03.480And I also attracted the Walton family.
00:10:06.240The Walton family, meaning John Walton, they have son Lucas.
00:10:14.260We got involved in 1995 and he was partners all the way to 2004.
00:10:19.800And the Walton family, over the last 20-some years, have also put in about $23 million into the project.
00:10:28.860But by being the father of a sick patient, being very serious about all of this and not chasing the money, just chasing the cure, it actually won me tons of wonderful allies, including Dan O'Connor of Trial Site News, Professor Frank Park, Dr. Lucha Lusato.
00:10:48.240So it goes on and on and on, all of the wonderful people who are helping us.
00:10:53.640Because this is obviously, for some people, not about a cure or treatment, but about making money.
00:11:00.920Are you concerned that these powerful, big pharma corporations will move to try to stop you again?
00:11:09.380That's always a possibility and always a concern.
00:11:13.160We know how these huge, you know, multinational corporations work.
00:11:18.000You know, for them to knock somebody off is not a big deal.
00:11:21.460You know, somebody dies of a heart attack or gets hit by a car and something like that.
00:11:25.780However, you know, I've met President Trump.
00:11:31.300I'm very close to Robert Kennedy and him, Senator Tim Scott from North Carolina, have all pledged to make a gene therapy for sickle cell disease and thalassemia, my own son's disease, accessible.
00:11:48.860So at this time, if they decide to do something against me, I think they'd have a lot of, they'd have to think about a real lot before they would do something.
00:12:00.440But, of course, it's always a concern.
00:12:02.960Well, we obviously not only pray for your safety, but we pray for anybody who's afflicted with these horrific diseases.
00:12:11.140I really think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the standout appointees by President Trump.
00:12:18.480I knew him casually before he himself ran for president, had a high regard for him then.
00:12:25.520What impresses me most about him is when you watch him prior to his appointment, even prior to his candidacy, running first as a Democrat, then as an Independent,
00:12:37.020and ultimately putting his own personal ambitions aside to endorse President Donald Trump, forming a powerful new political realignment.
00:12:47.260Because I think millions of common sense minded Democrats and independents followed him in the last election.
00:12:56.820But what impresses me the most about him is that in any format, whether in a panel or whether questioned about his beliefs,
00:13:08.500he never makes any statement that he can't back up with solid research from a credible source, whether it's a trial or whether it is a study.
00:13:25.060I also think it was disgusting the way that big media tried to just erase him, just to try to censor him entirely.
00:13:34.740So even when he did get on, say, CNN or one of the three networks, they would severely edit his interviews, never allowing him to fully and completely express himself.
00:13:49.440It was a news blackout that this administration opposes.
00:13:55.520I think one of the three pillars of this new coalition is free speech.
00:14:01.040And the fact that he's changed the vaccination advisory board makeup, the fact that he is outlawing certain toxic additives, dyes and other chemicals in our food,
00:14:17.300things that have already happened long ago in Europe that will now happen now,
00:14:21.340shows me that his commitment to make America healthy again is very serious, very much on target.
00:14:28.540I notice that he is relentless in his efforts.