I'm making drugs for cats

I can see why you found that upsetting.

Still: our society (rationally) does not devote the same resources to drug development for animals as it does for humans. And even protocols, dosing regimens, etc, for humans are not perfect. And even when the ideal protocol is chosen, some people still have a bad outcome by being an outlier.

Medicine is very imperfect; veterinary medicine is worse.

Lost two little friends because of that ;(

Damn I thought he'd be working on like, cat Ecstasy or something.

I mentioned this before in HN, will mention again. There is definitely something about vasodilation and hair growth/mobility, especially when it comes to in-grown facial hair.

If you have in-grown hairs, take Viagra once and they'll start coming out in a few hours on their own or with minimal mechanical force. The effect continues for a day or two so I am sure even the secondary metabolites might be somewhat active in inducing this effect.

> I felt good! The next step was in sight: a test of the drug in humans, to see if we actually saw the blood levels of cyclosporine that I expected we would. We had contracted with a CRO in the Netherlands and were raising the $1+ million needed to actually carry out the test when – pop! – the biotech markets imploded. Suddenly, investors literally stopped returning my (and everyone else’s) emails.

That sounds like a Phase 1 trial for safety in human volunteers. If the plan was to sell the IP to or partner with a major Pharma, maybe this could work. But the IP situation may not be that clear-cut with a drug repurposing, especially given this:

> This is still a tall order for a guy whose background was, again, science blogger. But things went surprisingly ok, all things considered. I linked up with an excellent corporate attorney and patent attorney, both of whom agreed to let me use their services on a pay later basis. ...

You really can't do this on the cheap.

People in tech (or even science broadly) trying to get into the drug industry frankly have no clue about what it actually takes to get a drug approved for humans in the US. Hundreds of millions are table stakes. The bar is higher than just about any other industry for new product introduction, even for a repurposing.

Even if the bear market had stayed in hibernation for another year or two, the fundamental problem is that human drug approval is a massive resource drain that requires very deep pockets and an ironclad IP position.

Failure (after massive expenditure) should be considered the base case.