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Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

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Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#331

Post by YHK »

LinuxBender wrote: post #310
YHK wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. This is exactly what we are trying to do. It is difficult for us to get rid of the mad scientist label. We have a team in fact that evaluate the FDA requirement and looking at what would be the best way to do it. Also, Open IP means for us that we will share the modified strains which are optimized for the expression of the insulin, and ideally, we will be able to provide scientific knowledge and resources…

Off topic question: Is there a database maintained by BioHackers that has reverse engineered some or all of the prescription pharmaceuticals, showing not only the compounds used, but how to make, measure and test them? There are government sites that list all the chemical compounds, but details are scattered all over the place on how to make, measure and test them. Asking as a prepper that wants to stock up on food,…

The four thieves vinegar is doing something like that (https://fourthievesvinegar.org/) They work also on patented molecules and try to reverse engineer proces, and then publish it. (which makes it illegal, so they are anonymous) I don't know how many molecules they published though.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#332

Post by BurningFrog »

narrator wrote: post #233
Thebroser wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are crazy patents throughout the entirety of the insulin production pipeline. Some of these being extremely absurd such as patenting the pH of a buffer for specific protocols! I volunteer for the Open Insulin Foundation on/off when not too focused on my research project and it's basically how can we come up with a roadmap to making this decentralized insulin without violating any existing patents. An added laye…

Can't you just make Insulin like they made it 20 years ago using expired patents?

Sure, but I think a substantial problem is getting FDA to approve your manufacturing process.

Even then, modern insulin is apparently quite a bit better than the "classic" stuff.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#333

Post by themaninthedark »

jamincan wrote: post #275
RHSeeger wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it's the difference between "is a requirement for" and "is the cause of". - People drive cars. - Cars are car jacked. - If people did not drive cars, carjackings could not happen. - People driving cars is a requirement for carjackings. - People driving cars is not a cause of carjackings. I understand that it is possible and truthful to argue that people driving cars is a cause of carjackings; it's just not my…

You're letting pedantry get in the way of the far more important point that making the medication more affordable would save lives.

By claiming that the companies are colluding and have raised the price, the charge is leveled that the companies are behaving immorally.

When people learn that the "old insulin" and "new insulin" are completely different products and that "old insulin" is still available at a low cost, the narrative and goodwill is shattered.

People hate being lied to and they hate being manipulated.

If you want to have a discussion that we should make the "new insulin" available for at low cost of for free, that is great! We can talk about the cost to manufacture and to develop drugs.

There are many smart people here and around the world, when we put our minds to a problem, we can find a solutions.

But by not acknowledging and downplaying the time and effort that companies and people have put into the "new insulin", then you are cheapening the work they have done and are signaling to everyone that you would do the same to their time and effort as well.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#334

Post by emodendroket »

epmaybe wrote: post #207
nceqs3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every drug company gives away their drugs for free to people who can't afford it in the US. It's sad that not enough people take advantage of patient assistance programs.

This is apologist thinking at best, intentionally misleading at worst. You are correct that companies do have patient assistance programs. What you’re leaving out is that this applies to a small subset of people that usually have to be denied federal/state insurance, not have any other kind of insurance, and make less than 4x federal poverty level. additionally, they rarely provide a lifelong supply. Imagine being a…

Not only that, but the people who most need the assistance are also the likeliest to have trouble jumping through all the hoops. I used to work for a nonprofit who would administer these patient assistance programs and after a while I felt like I was just getting a lower wage for being part of what was clearly mostly a service to for-profit companies.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#335

Post by emodendroket »

GrinningFool wrote: post #302
epmaybe wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is apologist thinking at best, intentionally misleading at worst. You are correct that companies do have patient assistance programs. What you’re leaving out is that this applies to a small subset of people that usually have to be denied federal/state insurance, not have any other kind of insurance, and make less than 4x federal poverty level. additionally, they rarely provide a lifelong supply. Imagine being a…

Not only this, on top of it all - as if it's not hard enough to ask for 'handouts' - they require you to submit evidence that you don't make too much money. Just a W-2 or a federal tax return should do - not like those poor people should care about their data or privacy or dignity or anything ~s

You're lucky if they settle for that and don't want all your bank statements.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#336

Post by emodendroket »

bingidingi wrote: post #200
nceqs3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every drug company gives away their drugs for free to people who can't afford it in the US. It's sad that not enough people take advantage of patient assistance programs.

Many people simply don’t know about them! I grew up poor and the amount of work that goes into finding and using some services is ridiculous. We bought a house using some assistance programs and at a couple points were speeding across the city to get paperwork in by sone deadline no one told us about (luckily we had a car!). Not to mention that services like foodstamps can be unreliable… I’ve probably spent hours of…

Call me cynical but I don't think that's necessarily seen as a downside by the people in charge. It lets you have it both ways to technically offer assistance that many people find too difficult to actually get.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#337

Post by emodendroket »

dragonwriter wrote: post #327
edge17 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, but what does "can't pay" mean? Does it mean the drug cost 100%+ of your income? 10% of your income?

It means “the manufacturer realizes they won’t get the price they charge from other channels from you, so is willing to settle for the PR and tax benefits (and whatever residual cost is still charged) rather than nothing.

I mean in many cases the product is still profitable for them at the reduced rate, but why settle?

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#338

Post by erosenbe0 »

shkkmo wrote: post #246
f6v wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what about economies or scale? And the the production is already decentralized. I guess there’s more than one plant in the US.

Those econmies of scale are simply driving up profits for an oligopoly that uses IP laws and acquisitions to extract maximum value from sick people. We could revoke the IP and thus force these companies to compete on price... but that hasn't happened. Thus the only solution that is making any progress is circumventing the IP and developing an open process.

What IP though? Humalog is off patent. It now appears to be just red-tape or collusiom.

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#339

Post by dnautics »

f6v wrote: post #17

As someone who had to create transgenic E.coli in a lab, I admire the effort. It’s hard to get it right, especially when trying to make bacteria produce stuff for you. However, it feels like a huge step backward. Imagine you couldn’t afford to buy a piece of bread. Instead, you need to grow your own grains and build a windmill first. Sounds ridiculous in 2021.

transgenic E coli is easy, not sure what you think is hard.

Insulin, though is possibly one of the most nightmarishly difficult proteins to make. It's kind of astonishing to me that Insulin was both the first protein sequenced and the first pharmaceutically relevant protein synthesized. Mother necessity, I suppose.

Genentech started making separated-chain insulin in E coli, back in the day, and that is emphatically not how it is done today. You get a whole bunch of crap because you need to keep the two chains denatured, and that results in scrambled disulfide bonds. If you try to do it in protein-folding conditions, one of the chains crashes out into plaques structurally similar to alzheimer's plaques.

You could make it as a single-chain protein, and then cleave out the middle section, except that the protease that you would use to cleave it out has another site internally!! And all of the proteases which leave a "clean end" leave a "clean end" in the wrong direction to yield a good insulin molecule.

Industrially, insulin is made (in yeast, not E coli) by going ahead and cleaving at that extra site, and then performing a reverse proteolysis to install a synthetically generated peptide, restoring the molecule. That's also why most insulin variants (e.g. humalog) have mutations in the tail end, that's the part that is "reinstalled". Note how crazy this is. Proteases are usually used to break proteins apart. Although technically all chemical reactions are indeed reversible, to force the chemical reaction in the other direction, you're fighting entropy, to put humpty dumpty back together again.

Honestly OIP's best shot is probably Michael Weiss' one-chain insulin molecule, which should have gone off-patent this year (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8192957B2/en) (15 years, right? IANAL) but for some reason got extended to 2028!!

However, the big danger with insulin analogs is that you really need to test the F out of them because insulin cross-reacts with the IGF-1 pathway and cause cell hypergrowth = cancer. I would also be very careful with home-made stuff because I would need to be convinced that the forumlation whipped up doesn't change the properties in such a way to to increase IGF-1 activation.

I advised Open Insulin on a ton of stuff in the first few months, but they took literally none of my advice on anything, and last I checked their mailing list a few years ago they were still stuck on some stuff I warned them about (e.g. insulin doesn't stain in coomassie blue -- another thing which makes insulin a pain in the ass).

Re: Biohackers take aim at big pharma’s stranglehold on insulin

#340

Post by erosenbe0 »

shkkmo wrote: post #251
nknealk wrote: post #30

Some considerations on manufacturing — there’s a variety of product quality steps necessary to release batches of medicine. The FDA mandates this as part of GMP regulations. These steps help ensure things like: * How do I know that every vial has the same concentration of insulin each time? That is to say 1 unit from a vial today and 1 unit from another vial is going to have the same dosing. * How do I know the insul…

> there’s a lot of value to purchasing medicine from regulated sources. I’m not against upstart competition against big pharma, but I worry that you might literally kill someone if you don’t include these product quality steps in your process. Where are you getting this from? This goal of this isn't to have every diabetic brewing insulin in their garage so they evade the IP police in a distrubuted fasion. The goal is…

What IP police? It's off-patent. You just need to be a compounding pharmacy I think.
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