August 14, 2026

Jason West on the 1,100-Year-Old Middle Eastern Tea Now Helping Fight Cancer

Jason West, co-founder and EVP of NextGen Scientific, joins Mookie on Bald Ambition to talk about a cancer drug with an unusual origin story. Instead of starting in a billion-dollar lab, it started with a weed growing wild across the Middle East, a plant people have brewed into tea and used as a folk remedy for cancer since at least the 9th century. NextGen's founder, chemist Gene Zaid, grew up in the Middle East watching family members use that same plant, Arum Palestinum, as a traditional t...

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