Readers have been avidly forwarding the latest ad from Patrick Cox to me over the past week or so — he’s been pitching his Breakthrough Technology Alert newsletter ($695 “on sale” from the $2,000 “list price”, though as I’ve written about it over the years it’s pretty much always been “on sale”). So naturally, your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe wishes nothing more than to please the eager readers of Gumshoe nation … and we’ll take a look today.

And as with most of Cox’s ads, it’s full of big big big promise — not just that there’s a company that will make you rich, but that it will change the way we live forever.

With, of course, the clever little name that represents this life-changing idea: Panakeia 604.

Here’s the Panakeia bit from Cox:

“In Greek mythology, they called her Panakeia.

“She was the Goddess of healing. She carried a potion that would heal any sickness.

“Today, the concept of Panakeia is still with us.

“You know her legacy through use of the word panacea. A panacea is a cure-all. A panacea fixes everything” ….

“What would you say if I said one revolutionary CEO and his researchers think they’ve found this mythical panacea – a modern day Panakeia in our midst.

“I’m calling it ‘Panakeia 604’.

“I call it Panakeia because it might just be a real ‘cure-all’. I call it ‘604’ because that’s the patent this CEO holds on the substance.”

So yes, that’s what we’re looking for: A panacea.

“And the science behind ‘Panakeia 604’ is shockingly simple. It boils down to the fact that scientists seem to have stumbled upon a natural ‘super treatment’.

“This ‘super treatment’ attacks the cause of many diseases and ailments.

“Better yet, it’s natural. It’s not a chemical or derived from some harsh laboratory process…

“The breakthrough contains a substance found in tomatoes and red peppers.

“But it’s NOT one of those crackpot beta-carotene or resveratrol-type stories.

“What this tiny company discovered could make those stories look quaint by comparison.

“Because the ‘super treatment’ I’ll tell you about treats the factors that cause Alzheimer’s disease.”

Sound familiar? Yep, I think so too — and they go out of their way to tease wholesome stuff like red peppers as the source of this stuff (one email even came in with the subject line, “Eat a Red Pepper — Grow Wealthier?”), though if it’s still the company I think, they’re using a source plant with a very different reputation.

We’re probably treading on a pretty well-worn path here … but let’s see what other clues Cox provides so we can ascertain whether he’s still pitching the same stock.

“Researchers from Johns Hopkins are digging through data related to Panakeia 604 as I speak to you today.

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“300 people in the Mid-West are currently enrolled in a study that seeks to find out just how well this possible panacea works – and for which ailments…

“There’s a study in Europe going on right now too.

“The wife of a famous politician is pushing for this breakthrough to gain wider awareness too…she wants to give it to every worker in her state that she possibly can…”

So what is it?

Yep, you guessed it, Patrick Cox is again touting Star Scientific (CIGX — free trend analysis here from one of our partners, Marketclub … this one’s been jumpy), a stock he’s teased several times before (the last time around, he called it the “last stock you’ll ever need” back in May … hopefully you didn’t take that too literally if you were an adherent of his at the time, since it’s down considerably since then).

And this “Panakeia 604” is anatabine, a substance found in peppers and tomatoes, to be sure (along with a bunch of other plants), but, for our purposes, a substance that’s found in unusually high concentrations in tobacco. This substance, which they’re now marketing as an anti-inflammatory nutritional supplement called Anatabloc — they sell it themselves and you can even buy it on Amazon now. They also have a second product, called CigRX, that seems to be mostly anatabine and yerba mate, and which they market as a smoking cessation aid.

There’s also a chart in the teaser ad with the title, “Super Treatment Destroys Inflammation — Lipitor Does Not” and an impressive looking bar chart of inflammation response for “Panakeia 604” vs. Lipitor. That chart is an excerpt from one in a Roskamp Institute study that you can find abstracted on this page — and it is indeed impressive, though I don’t know what the scientific design of the study was or whether Lipitor and the Lipitor dosage in that chart has any significance beyond being a control for comparison. Lipitor seems to be a bit of a “straw man” that Anatabine is put up against, in part because it’s been such a valuable drug — my understanding is that Lipitor has impressive anti-inflammatory properties, but you wouldn’t go first to Lipitor if you had a problem with inflammation (I’m certainly inexpert on this, so feel free to chime in if you like). There have been follow-ups that seem more sensible, like the comparison of anatabine to aspirin and Celebrex and the comparison to ibuprofen and other drugs.

Star Scientific’s share price has been driven this year by both the talk about the potential for anatabine to fight inflammation, largely revolving around Alzheimer’s Disease, and by their lawsuit with big tobacco. And it’s pretty much impossible to determine that the stock should be worth any particular price — the arguments from bulls tell us that this should be the biggest supplement in the history of the world, with billions and billions in sales as everyone takes it; and bears tell us that this is a pipe-dream company that doesn’t make any money and has a product whose sales don’t (and won’t anytime soon) come anywhere close to paying for their R&D and administrative expenses. Two examples of those are the StreetSweeper folks, who bet against the stock and wrote about its woes over the Summer, and Dr. John Faessel, a SeekingAlpha contributor who’s almost as excited about the stock as Patrick Cox.

The last news was bad from the courts, which is why the shares took a hit in the last month or two — this lawsuit revolved around the initial reason for being of Star Scientific, their curing process for tobacco that supposedly makes the tobacco healthier. The word from the last lawsuit was that their patent is indeed valid, but that a jury determined that RJ Reynolds did not infringe on the patent — so no big payday there, at least not yet.

And what’s the urgency? (There’s always some urgency — otherwise, why would you get off your duff to subscribe?)

“This is the wealth chance you have today. If you act before midnight, Thursday, October 27th.

“There’s an important reason for that date – major news could break around that time.”

That potential urgency relates to the expected findings of the Flint Study, which is the big (200-300 patients) study run by the Roskamp Institute that aims to determine what impact RCP-006 has on people (RCP-006 is the clinical name for their anatabine compound, roughly the same stuff they’re selling as the Anatabloc supplement). I don’t know if they’ve announced an end date, but when the study began the implications and chatter were that we should expect some reports and/or results late in the year, which is roughly … now-ish.

I did a bit of speculating on CIGX shares earlier in the year, though that was largely a bet on the potential for their “safer tobacco” patent — which turned out poorly. I still happen to have some call options on CIGX, but they’re likely to expire worthless unless they happen to cure Alzheimer’s by next year — so by all means, let me cheer them on!

In all seriousness, Patrick Cox is an enthusiast for story stocks and this is currently his favorite story — which doesn’t mean that it won’t turn out to be a great speculation, but we should take the exciting teaser language with a big grain of salt. He also spoke at the conference at the Roskamp Institute over the summer, apparently, so he’s definitely on board with this being a life-changing nutritional supplement, so regardless of whether or not the news is great in the next few weeks I expect we’ll keep seeing the teasers.

These things move slowly, there are very early stage studies going on about anatabine and inflammation and Alzheimer’s, and there is likely to be some substantial fighting about patents if anatabine does turn out to be a life-changing supplement that everyone wants to take.

Star Scientific is trying to sell its proprietary Anatabloc supplement, and would clearly like to auction off their anatabine patents and their procedures to the highest pharma bidder, but it may be tough to claim that their anatabine is better than the anatabine that anyone else can get from tobacco or from any number of vegetables, and I have no idea whether they really have the best or only way to extract or perfect anatabine. There are other anatabine-related patents out there, and I expect others are studying it as well — I have no idea how this will wind up.

I don’t know of any high-value patented nutritional supplements out there, perhaps there are some, but it’s hard to picture them carrying the same kind of profits as Lipitor. Sales certainly ought to pick up if they can release some good results and get attention this Fall, since there are always folks eager to try new nutritional supplements that might really make a difference, but it will be a while before we can measure CIGX based on conventional metrics like sales, or earnings.

I know lots of my readers have followed CIGX in the couple years since Patrick Cox started pitching the stock, so it’s very likely that many of you know much more about the compound and the near-term happenings than does your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe … feel free to share that wisdom with a comment below.

For full disclosure: I still have those call options on CIGX, but won’t trade in them or the stock for at least three days.