A Las Vegas-based biotech CEO has a vision of Nevada as a hub for medical innovation. And he is hoping voters will help him make it happen.
A political action committee titled Freedom to Try Medical Innovation for Nevada in mid-November quietly filed a proposed constitutional amendment to establish the Silver State as a safe haven for potentially life-altering treatments not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The proposal expands upon existing “Right to Try” legislation, which allows terminally ill patients to seek experimental treatments.
Right to Try acts have passed in the majority of states, including Nevada in 2015 under Gov. Brian Sandoval, and at the federal level during President Trump’s first term. But Dan Montano, the founder and CEO of Zhittya Genesis Medicine and the man behind the Freedom to Try PAC, believes it to be “completely worthless.”
“They all say, ‘Oh we’re going to give you a right to try, but here’s a bureaucracy that’s going to say no,’” he told the Nevada Current.
He points to the FDA’s own reporting that, between 2018 and 2022, fewer than two dozen investigational drugs were made available to patients through Right to Try.
Montano believes Nevada could do better. And he says he is planning to spend upwards of $2 million to make that happen. According to Montano, the PAC is already in the process of hiring a signature gathering firm.
Freedom to Try will need to submit 148,788 signatures to election officials by June 24 to qualify for this year’s general election ballot. If voters approve Freedom to Try this November, it will have to return to voters in the 2028 general election. If approved a second time, it would go into effect.
The proposed amendment explicitly establishes that people in the state have the right to make decisions on their medical care and treatment, and it does not limit this right to only those with a terminal illness or diagnosis.
It also grants the medical providers and others involved with the experimental products broad legal immunity in civil cases, so long as their studies have been approved by a physician licensed by the state and an independent institutional review board. It also prohibits the state and local municipalities from creating additional regulatory requirements on the industry.
Montano believes it would be a significant economic driver, with biotech and health care companies flocking to Nevada from across the world to offer treatments that they can’t or are hesitant to provide elsewhere.
But his ultimate end game goes beyond Nevada. Montano wants to give developing treatments the chance to make a big enough splash that the FDA will be forced to change its approach to approving drugs. The current process involves barriers that are nearly impossible to overcome, he adds.
Montano cited a Tufts University study that found it takes roughly two decades and upwards of $2.2 billion to get a drug approved through the FDA.
“It is a sum that only big pharma — only big pharma — can come up with,” he added.
Financial barriers are what tank most biotech companies, argues Montano, even those who have or could produce life-changing medications.
“It is my opinion that there are so many amazing breakthroughs that were discovered in the ‘80s, ‘90s to 2000s that are sitting on the shelf and not being developed.”
Montano also says there are dozens of drugs approved for European and Asian markets that will most likely never come to the United States because the companies won’t give up $2 billion and 20 years to gain FDA approval. He believes his Freedom to Try could offer them a path to the U.S. marketplace.
“I was an investment banker for 30 years,” said Montano. “We could start a computer company on day one, have $5 million in the bank by day 30, have our first alpha product out (in) 90 days, go get it approved. … Lo and behold, in 9 months, 12 months, we could have sales, and we could sell out in four years and everybody thought we were Jesus.”
He contrasts that experience with his Zhittya Genesis Medicine, which for more than two decades has been attempting to commercialize a natural growth factor called FTF-1. Zhittya began developing FTF-1 as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s before seeing its potential for reversing type-two diabetes.
“We’ve been at this process now with the FDA for 25 years, and we have a product that addresses the number one cause of death in the world,” he said. But they’ve since hit a roadblock in a trial stage that they are not sure they can overcome.
Why Nevada?
“I was spending $2 million a month on Washington swamp creatures and getting nowhere,” Montano said. “Now I have a chance to spend it here and find out if Nevada wants to become the medical innovation center of the world.”
Montano said he’s been to Carson City and spoken with state lawmakers — “on both sides of the aisle,” he emphasizes — but left “really, really disappointed.”
“They all had new ways to regulate it, administrate it, control it, la la la,” he said.
So, he would rather appeal directly to the people.
In its heyday of legislative debate across the country, Right to Try faced opposition, particularly with groups focused on patient safety, but was seen as broadly supported by everyday people when asked. Montano is confident Nevadans, with their deep-rooted libertarian ideals, will overwhelmingly support the more expansive Freedom to Try.
He doesn’t expect much resistance, at least not this year. Opponents of ballot measures that have to pass twice are sometimes quiet the first go around, perhaps hoping the issue will take care of itself, but then wage a full-court press against it the second time around
Montano believes real-world results from Zhittya will counteract that.
“My goal is to have 100,000 type-2 diabetes dosed before the ‘28 election,” he said. “If we have dosed 100,000 people and 95% are diabetes free, I want to hear big pharma’s argument then.”
Montano seems dispassionate about the potential dangers of the passage of the Freedom to Try amendment.
“Freedom to do medical innovation has risk,” he said. “But I will tell you this: Allowing gambling has risk, allowing alcohol has risk. Here is what I believe. The free market will find out the frauds.”
He also points to history to suggest that some risk is worth it.
“(Jonas) Salk injected his children with his (polio) vaccine,” said Montano. “He tested it on his own children. He’d be arrested for child abuse today.”
Sergiy Prokofiy Montano, Zitya’s head of marketing and an officer of the Freedom to Try PAC, interjected to note that their proposed constitutional amendment includes protections — like the institutional review board requirement — that help ensure ethically sound practices.
Some might try to use the amendment as cover, he acknowledges, but bad actors are already flouting the laws and taking advantage of the sick and vulnerable.
“This law doesn’t change that,” he said.
Dan Montano said the brutal truth is that “some people may try things that are too far over the line,” but he believes a far greater number of people are dying because they don’t have access to treatments.
He cites Cato Institute research that found 12 times more people die waiting for a drug to be approved that later becomes available than die from already approved drugs.
“If we don’t try new things, we’re all going to die of the old things,” added Montano.
date: 2026-02-10 15:00:00
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