The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#2It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals.
Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#3It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals. Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
I’m not sure why you consider it a great deal of waste.
Building better models that simulate a human biological process must have some sort of payoff? It increases human knowledge, and should provide a foundation on which others can build.
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#4It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals. Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
The breadth of your second statement gives me pause, but as I'm not well versed in computational biology, I'll just ask: What are the hard problems?
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#5Yup. And judging by their team and strategy they are likely using a highly empirical ligand discovery platform (ie DEL) and using the (admittedly best in class) MD for guiding med chem. Taking the hard problem of drug discovery and then saying you are going to do rational design (a road riddled with dead bodies) on dynamic alloseteric sites of challenging targets is a lofty goal to put it mildly..
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#6It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals. Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
Most of the cost is regulatory. But there is a meaningful difference between a world in which it costs $1M to screen and a world in which it costs $100k to screen. In the latter world, startups become viable with intent to find a drug candidate, rather than only being viable if they already have one. That's a big important difference, and one that was only otherwise going to be solved by everyone transitioning from small molecule to gene therapy development.
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#7It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals. Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
For one, there are more candidates than capacity to run clinical trials. Costs & timelines for those have been going up over time. Lots of high-potential compounds just sitting on the shelf.
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#8It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals. Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
Most of the cost is regulatory. But there is a meaningful difference between a world in which it costs $1M to screen and a world in which it costs $100k to screen. In the latter world, startups become viable with intent to find a drug candidate, rather than only being viable if they already have one. That's a big important difference, and one that was only otherwise going to be solved by everyone transitioning from s…
interesting point. though this ignores the (surprisingly) successful re-purposing strategies to reduce future regulatory burden and and reduce or even eliminate high throughput screening campaigns. that well will dry up sooner or later but other discovery platforms ie phage display etc. have become commoditized and robust enough that they are pretty accessible to even low capitalized startups if finding a ligand is what you need to get off the ground.
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#9It really remains to be seen whether these approaches will make any difference in efficacy or cost of pharmaceuticals. Blindly thinking that having better simulations of proteins and drugs is going to solve any of the hard problems has led to a great deal of waste.
I’m not sure why you consider it a great deal of waste. Building better models that simulate a human biological process must have some sort of payoff? It increases human knowledge, and should provide a foundation on which others can build.
A waste for society? No. A waste for the people doing it who are never going to be appropriately compensated for the value of their failure to society? Yes.
The churn that arises as a consequence of the fact that we don't know how to reward failure (or even merely punish it less) is the real waste.
Re: The Quant King, the Drug Hunter, and the Quest to Unlock New Cures
#10The title looks like a really good idea for a modern-world pen&paper RPG system.