Divine Secrets Of The 1747 Sisterhood
By Christine Y. Chen Research Compiled By Julie Schlosser And Noshua Watson

(FORTUNE Magazine) – 1747 Internet drug trials www.1747.net

Bleeding gums, putrid lesions, hemorrhaging, and a near-comatose debility. That's what faced James Lind when he climbed aboard the H.M.S. Salisbury. The Scottish surgeon conducted the world's first clinical medical trials on May 20, 1747, when he experimented on a dozen sailors afflicted with scurvy.

Naturally, the good doctor had no idea that 253 years later some doctors would create a company named after the year of his grand experiment. Dr. Steve Cummings and Dr. Brad Jacobs of U.C. San Francisco Medical Center, breast cancer specialist Dr. Susan Love, and medical-device entrepreneur Julian Nikolchev launched 1747 two years ago to bring clinical trials like Dr. Lind's onto the Net.

Rather than conducting expensive clinical drug trials among a group of people in a limited area, 1747 enables pharmaceuticals companies to reach anyone with a Net connection. The company coordinates patient screening and medication shipments, and solicits patient responses through e-mail and the Internet.

Yes, most medicines awaiting FDA approval target diseases that must be assessed in face-to-face trials. However, 1747 has found $2 billion worth of drugs that have been approved by the FDA but have yet to hit the market and rely on self-reported results. According to Forrester Research, traditional trials for drugs near the final stage of FDA approval can cost more than $11 million over two years; 1747 says it can reduce that price tag by half.

The company has only two full-time employees: general manager and VP of business development Naomi Fried, and VP of product development Michelle Arney. It has no CEO and no headquarters (for meetings it uses the offices of the Women's Technology Cluster, a nonprofit San Francisco incubator). So far it hasn't needed other trappings. It recently concluded a study testing the effects of valerian root and kava-kava vs. a placebo. Thirty thousand people visited the Website, 1,500 volunteered, and after thorough screening, 391 patients from 45 states were accepted. Fried says the trial took 13 weeks and cost $200,000, compared with a traditional clinic-based trial, which would have lasted a year and cost $1 million.

Such savings have caught the attention of some big guns. In April 2001, Eli Lilly's venture capital fund backed the startup. The pharmaceuticals giant is also 1747's first major customer: In March, Lilly completed the first Internet-based clinical study for Cialis, a competitor of Viagra. Alph Bingham, the VP for e-research and development for Lilly's venture fund, asserts that patients may have filled out questionnaires more candidly, since they were doing it anonymously over the Internet instead of being grilled in a clinic. "1747 has brought us a new way of thinking about trials and the role of the patient," he says. --Christine Y. Chen