2024-02-13 06:07:29
Thirteen years ago, the Cuban biologist Ariel Portal, expelled from the state-run Labiofam and a fervent defender of the healing properties of blue scorpion venom, emigrated to Ecuador and founded his own company, Lifescozul. With a private investment of three million dollars in the last seven years and a team of “renegade” Cuban scientists, the company insists – against the scientific consensus – that the toxins of the Rhopalurus junceus They can cure cancer and they dedicate their resources to that.
Concerned about being linked to the Cuban regime after reading this newspaper’s recent articles about Lifescozul, Portal responds to 14 intervene some questions. The most disturbing: how does a group of researchers who, they claim, broke all ties with their country of origin, obtain the venom of a scorpion endemic to Cuba?
Through “at least” two independent producers who live on the Island, Portal answers. They are the ones who “capture and milk the scorpions,” and then “someone” from the company travels to Cuba and looks for the vials with the substance. Once abroad, the bottles are sent to Lifescozul laboratories in Mexico and Chile to verify that the substance is not adulterated. “Each poison has its own unique fingerprint,” Portal clarifies.
According to the biologist, the collection process is carried out without help – or permits – from the Cuban State. In fact, independent scorpion hunters are one of the headaches of Labiofam, which also manufactures a homeopathic substance based on its venom, Vidatox, whose effectiveness against cancer Portal denies.
Lifescozul began as a “service company,” says the scientist, but now considers itself a “pharmaceutical development” company, with allies such as Pharmometrica, a Mexican laboratory that, according to Portal, “analyzes each (venom) sample.” and certifies it for our studies.
The company is now asking its private investors for another $11 million more to enter a clinical trial phase of its product, Escozul. For the company, Portal assures, having private capital “especially in the last five years” has been defining.
The current structure of Lifescozul – which also works on other types of products, such as nutritional supplements and vitamins – includes a scientific department, led by microbiologist Alexis Díaz, the “highest authority” on Cuban scorpion venom, a clinical trials department , headed by Dr. Mariela Guevara, and other marketing, medical care and monitoring teams.
They have a factory in Colombia, a research center in Mexico and in the United States they manage the financing of the project. The base of operations is in Ecuador, where Portal founded the “headquarters” of Lifescozul in 2009.
Behind each of the company’s managers – all former Labiofam scientists – there is a story. Portal himself was fired from his position at the state pharmaceutical company in 2006, when he confronted, he explains, his then director, José Antonio Fraga Castro, nephew of Fidel Castro. Vidatox, the product manufactured by Labiofam – and one of Escozul’s competitors in the international market – was “a whim of Fraga Castro,” says the scientist.
In 2000, scorpion venom as a cure for cancer was one of the obsessions of both uncle and nephew, Portal says. “Many patients went to Cuba to look for it because the BBC and CNN did reports on its potential.” The pioneer of the studies was Dr. Misael Bordier, a biologist born in Guantánamo who “was never able to publish anything that supported the properties of the poison.”
“Fraga Castro saw the potential, as he was Fidel’s nephew, he literally took the project away from Bordier, who died in 2005.” Bordier had formed an analysis group that included Portal and Alexis Díaz.
A year after Bordier’s death, his colleagues gave Fraga Castro two pieces of news. The good news: that the team had found “evidence” that “within the venom there are components capable of inhibiting malignant cell growth.” The bad news: that it would take ten years to have a concrete result. As minimum.
The director of Labiofam was angry, Portal recalls. “The country needs foreign currency now,” was his argument when accepting the proposal of Dr. Fabio Linares, a doctor specialized in homeopathy who assured that a compound could be sold “as if it were the established final product of the blue scorpion venom.” This is how Vidatox was born.
However, Portal, Díaz and Bordier’s other disciples studied the formula. The conclusion of the analysis, says the biologist, was worrying. “We tested Vidatox on malignant cell lines, with the result that not only did it have no effect on cancer, but it also accelerated it and to make matters worse there was no trace of poison within the formulation, as it was extremely diluted.” The conclusion, however, has a contradictory aspect: if Vidatox does not contain a trace of the toxin, which of its components “accelerates” the disease?
When they presented a report to Fraga Castro, he was offended. “He accused us of many things. I accused him of being corrupt and the discussion got out of hand. I ended up expelled.” Portal says that, from then on, everything was an odyssey for him. He worked cleaning offices at Icaic (the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry) until they gave him permission to leave the country. He then emigrated to Ecuador.
In the case of Alexis Díaz, whom Labiofam refused to release until several years later, he also left Cuba in 2018 to pursue a postdoctoral degree in Chile. “Díaz was not expelled but was subject to control for some years,” explains Portal. As for Guevara, who now resides in the Dominican Republic, he is the one who advises Lifescozul regarding clinical trials.
In 2014, Lifescozul also had a contact in Havana, José Luis Monzón, and “own farms,” as Portal revealed to Martí Noticias at the time. Monzón died a year after that interview and now “his daughters continue his work in Jagüey Grande (Matanzas),” says the biologist, who does not offer more details about his work on the Island. However, a reporter of 14 intervene He found out that the address provided by Portal to Martí Noticias did not exist. There is also no Bellavista building on 35th Street between 52 and 54, in the municipality of Playa, and no neighbor has heard of Monzón.
“Since 2018 we have not had any of our patients traveling to Cuba,” he insists. If anyone requests to go, Lifescozul puts them in contact with Monzón’s daughters in Matanzas. In Guantánamo – although Portal does not clarify whether they have ties to the company – “Misael Bordier’s relatives extract the poison.”
Portal admits that, as this newspaper pointed out, Lifescozul has indicated to patients that the Cuban Government offers treatments – very expensive – with scorpion venom. However, he assures that he has not done so with the intention that they will be treated at the Cira García hospital in Havana or at the La Pradera clinic for foreigners, founded by Fidel Castro in 1996. “In 13 years of existence we have never sent any patient to those centers. Explaining the costs (more than 1,200 dollars) is enough for them to give up going to Cuba.”
The prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer research center – founded in 1884 in the United States – has explained that there are no scientific arguments to affirm that scorpion venom cures cancer and that the benefits attributed to Escozul or Vidatox “are largely based on anecdotes, testimonies and experiments that may not have been executed correctly.
Lifescozul promises to have the papers in order so that, before the end of 2024, they will be allowed to carry out a clinical trial
Portal disagrees. “We are about to file several patents with an impact on three types of cancer,” he claims. “We are also working on the identification of active ingredients that have action on pain mechanisms in people with cancer and inflammation.” Lifescozul promises to have the papers in order so that, before the end of 2024, they will be allowed to carry out a clinical trial.
After two decades spent studying Rhopalurus junceus, Portal insists on its “enormous potential” and uses as an argument the more than a thousand cases he knows of, whose improvement seems to have been influenced by the product. However, it is a reality that Escozul, Vidatox and their counterfeits circulate widely on the black market in several countries, and that several “healers” sell them – very expensive – with the promise of healing.
This was the case of Carlos Miguel Castro Ochoa, a “naturopathic doctor” from Mexico, who charged nearly $1,000 for several bottles of Escozul from a patient who ended up dying. Portal emphasizes that his company had nothing to do with it and that, in fact, he collaborates with the authorities to identify illegal merchants who “sell water.”
Nor are they involved, he assures, with Cuban Health, from where he, Díaz and other Lifescozul scientists left – not always on good terms. “I don’t work in Cuba nor do I plan to. Personally, I don’t think they want to either.”
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