“There are words in ‘Pink Robots’ you wouldn’t normally expect to hear in a musical — words that would stop even Stephen Sondheim dead in his tracks. “Immunotherapy,” “synthetic antibodies” and the names of medical procedures I’m too much of a hypochondriac to repeat contribute to the show’s odd blend of space-age fantasy and clinical realism.” — Charles McNulty, theater critic, Los Angeles Times.
“I have to take the blame,” says Dr. Ivor Royston, referring to the review in the Times. Royston is the medical consultant on “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” the wild new play that just ended its sold-out run at the La Jolla Playhouse. “(Director) Des McAnuff wanted authentic language.”
Royston, co-founder of the original San Diego biotech Hybritech, whose executives and patents for monoclonal antibodies spread out to re-create San Diego in the 1980s, is nothing if not authentic. Today, he is the lead investor in Forward Ventures, director of the cutting-edge anti-cancer, gene therapy company Biocept. And he is an investor in musical theater, including the productions “Yoshimi” and “Jersey Boys,” both directed by McAnuff, who also launched “The Who’s Tommy.”
“Yoshimi” is the perfect production, Royston believes, to headline this year’s Innovators’ Ball at the La Jolla Playhouse, because the terrain is advanced San Diego biotech.
The plot revolves around a young Japanese woman felled by lymphatic cancer. Her body is injected with her own T-cells, multiplied 6-billion-fold in the lab, and these boosted immune cells must then fight off the “pink robots,” the bad cancer cells warring for possession of her blood, her body and her life.
On stage these pink robots take on an evil neon life, flying around like drone-bats, the little ones, with one Big Bad Boy ’Bot maybe 20 feet tall.
Of course, Yoshimi has two boyfriends, love is involved and the smooth psychedelic music of the Flaming Lips transfuses the auditorium like colored smoke, the play’s title ripped from the Lips’ intriguing 2002 album.
But bottom line, this is theater for smart people. Science drama. No Elizabeth Taylor throwing shot glasses at Richard Burton. Or Blanche DuBois purring about the kindness of strangers. Definitely not “The Big Bang Theory.”
Instead, the play is infused with the working vocabulary of the 1,200 biotech, venture capital and wireless executives and scientists who will soon give Yoshimi a standing ovation.
It’s their kind of show: neon pink robots flying around attacked by CLCs (Circulating Lymphatic Cells.) The production is ready for Cambridge and Menlo Park.
Broadway can wait.
But Royston doesn’t have time for theatrical musings. We are still talking on the cell before the show, and he’s got to get to the Greek (sorry) on time to introduce the Innovator’s evening.
“If ‘Yoshimi’ is the future of innovative theater, what’s the future of San Diego biotech? You once said the reason you became a doctor was to cure cancer. Have we made great progress? How illusive is that goal?” I ask him over the phone.
“I cannot think of a better time to be focused on cancer than now because of the major breakthroughs that have taken place here in San Diego: the gene sequencing that is being done by companies like Illumina and Life Technologies, particularly with Illumina because they also have a critical laboratory now where I, as a licensed physician, can write a prescription and you can have your genome sequenced.
“I have already sequenced my own genome, for example. Craig Venter is not the only person to do this. I have mine on my iPad. I can look up my 20,000 genes, any of the 3 billion letters of code — in laymen’s language — with everything very well explained.”
When a newspaper article came out last month about a new gene that was linked to Alzheimer’s, Royston was able, in one minute, to go his iPad, look up that gene — his gene — and see if he had that variance. “I did not have it,” he says.
Wasn’t he fearful of what he might find?
“Yes, you always are, when you can know immediately. I paid $5,000 to get my genes sequenced. Two years ago you had to pay $100,000. Three years from now it will be $500. When it’s $500, every cancer patient is going to have their tumor sequenced. Why? Because cancer is a molecular disease. It’s an abnormality in the genetic information. And what better way to start than to sequence the tumor genome and find out where the abnormalities are. Every cancer center in San Diego and the country is gearing up for this revolution.”
Sequencing opens up another new opportunity, Royston says.
“Just because you have cancer of one organ doesn’t mean a drug made for a different cancer isn’t going to work, when it’s found out to be the same genetic abnormality. The great example of that was a rare type of leukemia. There was a drug that targets that disease and lo and behold a couple of years later someone found the same gene abnormality in a form of stomach cancer. Now who would have thought that something that causes leukemia would be involved with a stomach cancer? So they gave this patient the same drug, and it cured that patient right into remission.”
Royston says that San Diego is going to be in the center of all of this business.
“San Diego is going to be in the center of all this, Steve,” insists Royston. “The big bottleneck will be when you have 3 billion letters to look at, you have to have the bioinformatics software to go through all that. But Illumina, Life Technologies, Scripps, UCSD, they are already hiring people to do that.
“San Diego has become one of the top three biotech centers in the world, the others being Boston/Cambridge and Stanford/San Francisco Bay Area. How fitting for the La Jolla Playhouse to be in the center of all that, on Innovation Night.”
See you at the show.
Steve Chapple’s Intellectual Capital covers game-changing people, ideas and perspectives. He can be reached at intellectual capitalchapple@gmail.com
“I have to take the blame,” says Dr. Ivor Royston, referring to the review in the Times. Royston is the medical consultant on “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” the wild new play that just ended its sold-out run at the La Jolla Playhouse. “(Director) Des McAnuff wanted authentic language.”
Royston, co-founder of the original San Diego biotech Hybritech, whose executives and patents for monoclonal antibodies spread out to re-create San Diego in the 1980s, is nothing if not authentic. Today, he is the lead investor in Forward Ventures, director of the cutting-edge anti-cancer, gene therapy company Biocept. And he is an investor in musical theater, including the productions “Yoshimi” and “Jersey Boys,” both directed by McAnuff, who also launched “The Who’s Tommy.”
“Yoshimi” is the perfect production, Royston believes, to headline this year’s Innovators’ Ball at the La Jolla Playhouse, because the terrain is advanced San Diego biotech.
The plot revolves around a young Japanese woman felled by lymphatic cancer. Her body is injected with her own T-cells, multiplied 6-billion-fold in the lab, and these boosted immune cells must then fight off the “pink robots,” the bad cancer cells warring for possession of her blood, her body and her life.
On stage these pink robots take on an evil neon life, flying around like drone-bats, the little ones, with one Big Bad Boy ’Bot maybe 20 feet tall.
Of course, Yoshimi has two boyfriends, love is involved and the smooth psychedelic music of the Flaming Lips transfuses the auditorium like colored smoke, the play’s title ripped from the Lips’ intriguing 2002 album.
But bottom line, this is theater for smart people. Science drama. No Elizabeth Taylor throwing shot glasses at Richard Burton. Or Blanche DuBois purring about the kindness of strangers. Definitely not “The Big Bang Theory.”
Instead, the play is infused with the working vocabulary of the 1,200 biotech, venture capital and wireless executives and scientists who will soon give Yoshimi a standing ovation.
It’s their kind of show: neon pink robots flying around attacked by CLCs (Circulating Lymphatic Cells.) The production is ready for Cambridge and Menlo Park.
Broadway can wait.
But Royston doesn’t have time for theatrical musings. We are still talking on the cell before the show, and he’s got to get to the Greek (sorry) on time to introduce the Innovator’s evening.
“If ‘Yoshimi’ is the future of innovative theater, what’s the future of San Diego biotech? You once said the reason you became a doctor was to cure cancer. Have we made great progress? How illusive is that goal?” I ask him over the phone.
“I cannot think of a better time to be focused on cancer than now because of the major breakthroughs that have taken place here in San Diego: the gene sequencing that is being done by companies like Illumina and Life Technologies, particularly with Illumina because they also have a critical laboratory now where I, as a licensed physician, can write a prescription and you can have your genome sequenced.
“I have already sequenced my own genome, for example. Craig Venter is not the only person to do this. I have mine on my iPad. I can look up my 20,000 genes, any of the 3 billion letters of code — in laymen’s language — with everything very well explained.”
When a newspaper article came out last month about a new gene that was linked to Alzheimer’s, Royston was able, in one minute, to go his iPad, look up that gene — his gene — and see if he had that variance. “I did not have it,” he says.
Wasn’t he fearful of what he might find?
“Yes, you always are, when you can know immediately. I paid $5,000 to get my genes sequenced. Two years ago you had to pay $100,000. Three years from now it will be $500. When it’s $500, every cancer patient is going to have their tumor sequenced. Why? Because cancer is a molecular disease. It’s an abnormality in the genetic information. And what better way to start than to sequence the tumor genome and find out where the abnormalities are. Every cancer center in San Diego and the country is gearing up for this revolution.”
Sequencing opens up another new opportunity, Royston says.
“Just because you have cancer of one organ doesn’t mean a drug made for a different cancer isn’t going to work, when it’s found out to be the same genetic abnormality. The great example of that was a rare type of leukemia. There was a drug that targets that disease and lo and behold a couple of years later someone found the same gene abnormality in a form of stomach cancer. Now who would have thought that something that causes leukemia would be involved with a stomach cancer? So they gave this patient the same drug, and it cured that patient right into remission.”
Royston says that San Diego is going to be in the center of all of this business.
“San Diego is going to be in the center of all this, Steve,” insists Royston. “The big bottleneck will be when you have 3 billion letters to look at, you have to have the bioinformatics software to go through all that. But Illumina, Life Technologies, Scripps, UCSD, they are already hiring people to do that.
“San Diego has become one of the top three biotech centers in the world, the others being Boston/Cambridge and Stanford/San Francisco Bay Area. How fitting for the La Jolla Playhouse to be in the center of all that, on Innovation Night.”
See you at the show.
Steve Chapple’s Intellectual Capital covers game-changing people, ideas and perspectives. He can be reached at intellectual capitalchapple@gmail.com
