hair loss?
What can mRNA treat next?
11–20 of 197 posts
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#12It's an indictment of something that we've had this amazing new tool for vaccine production in existence for a decade but we never even tried to use it for that until COVID because "vaccines typically don’t make much money" and "vaccines just aren’t that exciting" scientifically: "it’s nice and easy," to quote Rossi from the article. If it really does turn out that effective mRNA vaccines can be created in a straight…
I agree with your sentiment, but we also need to careful with hindsight bias (i.e. it's easy to pick the winners after the fact)! It's a tricky question!
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#13I would love that the state sponsored research into chronic pain. Big pharma has no incentive to find cure, they want to push a suite of addictive pills that ruin lives or they spend money to block medical cannabis. Millions of people suffer with no way out. Edit: why people downvote the truth? I guess none of you suffered this and I hope you will not, but silencing a voice like that is inhumane.
Probably because it's not really on topic.
Worth reviewing the site guidelines here:
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#14Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#15It's an indictment of something that we've had this amazing new tool for vaccine production in existence for a decade but we never even tried to use it for that until COVID because "vaccines typically don’t make much money" and "vaccines just aren’t that exciting" scientifically: "it’s nice and easy," to quote Rossi from the article. If it really does turn out that effective mRNA vaccines can be created in a straight…
I thought about a scheme where the years of patent protection in a particular field where there has been lack of progress is adjusted upwards, creating incentives for r&d in that particular space. The same obviously should also go into the other direction
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#16Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#17I am so excited for the prospect of mRNA treatments, especially in the field of auto immune conditions like multiple sclerosis. Those scientists are heroes.
I haven't read anything related to treating autoimmune diseases with mRNA, that would be quite exciting. Do you happen to have a reference for this?
I have Ulcerative Colitis, which is a form of an autoimmune disease. A vaccine as a cure would be a game changer.
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#18It's an indictment of something that we've had this amazing new tool for vaccine production in existence for a decade but we never even tried to use it for that until COVID because "vaccines typically don’t make much money" and "vaccines just aren’t that exciting" scientifically: "it’s nice and easy," to quote Rossi from the article. If it really does turn out that effective mRNA vaccines can be created in a straight…
I see two big problems.
The science funding climate, at least in the US (I don't really know what goes on elsewhere) is in a really sad state. Projects with a low probability of success are really hard to get funded but that is precisely what you need to come up with really novel things. Curiously, science funding bodies don't seem to think of things in a probabilistic way.
The second issue is the same idea, but applied to industry. There is an activation energy that you need to surpass in order to make any business profitable. If we are talking about building a business around a brand new and unproven (in a business sense) technology like mRNA, the barrier is _huge_. You need entities with very deep pockets to accept year after year of losses before you can start getting a viable business producing cutting-edge products.
In both cases I think intelligent use of government funds could be a big help. I am not big on socialism, but I have long held that this is one of the most important things a government can and should provide: subsidies for risky research and business endeavors, not to mention large-scale infrastructure projects.
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#19I am so excited for the prospect of mRNA treatments, especially in the field of auto immune conditions like multiple sclerosis. Those scientists are heroes.
How would the treating of auto immune work? In my understanding you can trick the immune system into putting yet anther protein on the "kill on sight" list, by forcing the protein's mRNA blueprints into the production pipeline of some cells and... waiting, assuming that the immune system does its thing. So far so good. But isn't an autoimmune problem an entry on the "kill list" that shouldn't be there? I understand how we can append to that list (through a fascinatingly elaborate stack of indirections), but how can we revoke an entry?
Not questioning, just willing to learn.
Re: What can mRNA treat next?
#20It's an indictment of something that we've had this amazing new tool for vaccine production in existence for a decade but we never even tried to use it for that until COVID because "vaccines typically don’t make much money" and "vaccines just aren’t that exciting" scientifically: "it’s nice and easy," to quote Rossi from the article. If it really does turn out that effective mRNA vaccines can be created in a straight…
I agree with your sentiment, but we also need to careful with hindsight bias (i.e. it's easy to pick the winners after the fact)! It's a tricky question!
Sure, but when urgency suddenly became necessary, mRNA technology was pursued quickly, which indicates that we already knew it was promising.