Two Golden Rules. One Uncommon Path.
For some, there’s the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
For others, there’s its distorted mirror image: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
Since 2017, Provectus Biopharmaceuticals has operated at the intersection of both.
When post-2017 leadership stepped in, they weren’t handed capital, credibility, or clear regulatory pathways.
What they did receive was a very special, very bioactive, small molecule, Rose Bengal Sodium (RBS)—and the institutional knowledge to consistently, reproducibly synthesize (i.e., manufacture) RBS as a drug substance and an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) to pharmaceutical grade.
We believe RBS has unrealized potential to reshape medicine.
At Provectus’s 2025 annual stockholder meeting, we said:
What we’ve discovered through our work at Provectus is this: we think RBS is far more than a molecule—we believe it’s a systems-disruptor, not merely intervening in a single molecular target or linear disease pathway, but instead potentially having the capacity to reprogram, rebalance, or modulate multiple interacting body systems.
We believe RBS is unlike conventional molecules, APIs, drugs, or medical treatments. RBS appears to be capable of acting simultaneously or sequentially across multiple biological pathways, multiple tissues, and multiple disease mechanisms, acknowledging the human body as an interconnected, adaptive system.
When administered at sufficient exposure (that is, if the patient is given enough drug), RBS appears to have the potential to fundamentally reorient, reshape a patient’s disease trajectory. We’re seeing this potentially manifest across multiple therapeutic areas.
We didn’t invent RBS’s medical properties. But we saw what others didn’t. From the outside looking in, we saw promise. Now, from the inside looking out, we see transformative potential in healthcare.
Our work at Provectus informs how we think about the Company’s true worth. Our guiding principle, the Golden Rule, directs how we address patients and shareholders alike, and leads our business strategy: to deliver safe, effective, affordable, and accessible medicines at scale.
But potential alone doesn’t pay bills, fund trials, win FDA meetings, or rebuild trust.
Instead of chasing hype, we chose something harder:
Rebuilding with integrity, not illusion;
Preserving control, not ceding to capital;
Choosing milestone logic over calendar logic; and
Letting biology guide strategy, not buzzwords.
Our goal? Not just to save Provectus, but to protect the RBS-led paradigm that medicine can be affordable, accessible, and adaptive—not locked into one target, one disease, one profit center.
That meant embracing the real Golden Rule—trying to do right by patients, shareholders, and the science—even while navigating a situation where capital often calls the shots.
This wasn’t the path financial markets recognize quickly. New investors often reward wiping out old shareholders, taking companies like 2016 crisis-ridden Provectus private. Multiples financiers expressed such interest in early-2017 to Ed Pershing, the Company’s post-2017 chairman and chief executive officer.
For companies of Provectus’s then-ilk, Wall Street encourages diluting existing stockholders into oblivion to reward newer investors. On a fully diluted shares outstanding basis—not just shares outstanding—pre-2017 leadership diluted Provectus shareholders ~98% just from 2016 to 2017. Dilution has been ~5% from 2017 to 2025.
But our chosen path may be one that public health and future medicine will look back on with admiration.
At the 2025 annual meeting, we also said:
RBS doesn’t fit Pharma’s traditional drug development model of “one drug, one target, one disease.”
We believe RBS activates and redirects the body’s own systems—immune, metabolic, microbial, structural, etc.—toward restoring health.
Rather than narrowly targeting a symptom, blocking a single receptor, or focusing on just one “thing,” RBS may potentially reprogram how the body confronts disease.
Provectus didn’t just survive. It re-strategized—on principle.
And perhaps that’s what it takes to build a company truly worth the gold.
Provectus’s 2025 Annual Stockholder Meeting
Attendance
The annual meeting held on June 18th in Knoxville, Tenn. had ~25 people at the venue and ~100 people registered on Zoom.
Voting results
All proposals were approved by the required votes. The Company filed this information in a Form 8-K on June 20th.
Oral RBS for cancer treatment
During the Q&A session, a Stage IV pancreatic cancer patient named David—who previously had been advised, among other things, to enter hospice care due to the severity of his illness—shared his experience of taking oral rose bengal (i.e., a commercial-grade version compounded into an oral formulation under GMP conditions) under physician supervision, alongside chemotherapy.
He said to those in attendance that he had since achieved no evidence of disease (NED). With David’s permission and participation, we will share his journey in an upcoming Substack post.
David’s story underscores our continued commitment to Provectus’s ongoing work to advance an oral formulation of PV-10, the Company’s investigational cancer immunotherapy based on Provectus’s pharmaceutical-grade rose bengal sodium, toward clinical development for all cancers—carcinomas, sarcomas, leukemias, lymphomas and myeloma, and brain and spinal cord cancers—and for compassionate use access while we seek a first approval for oral PV-10 in cancer.
Forward-Looking Statements
The information provided in this Provectus Substack Post may include forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, relating to the business of Provectus and its affiliates, which are based on currently available information and current assumptions, expectations, and projections about future events and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such statements are made in reliance on the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as “aim,” “likely,” “outlook,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “budget,” “plan,” “continue,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “may,” “will,” “would,” “project,” “projection,” “predict,” “potential,” “targeting,” “intend,” “can,” “could,” “might,” “should,” “believe,” and similar words suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook.
The safety and efficacy of Provectus’s drug agents and/or their uses under investigation have not been established. There is no guarantee that the agents will receive health authority approval or become commercially available in any country for the uses being investigated or that such agents as products will achieve any revenue levels.
Due to the risks, uncertainties, and assumptions inherent in forward-looking statements, readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this Provectus Substack Post are made as of the date hereof or as of the date specifically specified herein, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.
Risks, uncertainties, and assumptions include those discussed in the Company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including those described in Item 1A of Provectus’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2024 and the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2025.