What is metformin's secret sauce?
news.northwestern.edu
What is metformin's secret sauce?
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#2FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works."
Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly".
I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work.
I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#3FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
That's very common actually! The mechanism of action for many drugs is unknown. And then it gets even weirder with psychoactive drugs: eventually the answer is "this drug effects this neurotransmitter which gives you this subjective first person experience, and we don't really know why". It brings up a lot of philosophical and existential questions!
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#4FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
If your pr deploys a machine learning model then that would be a suitable comment. I suppose the idea is similar, we can determine that this drug helps so a (hopefully) statistically significant degree so even if we don’t know how it works we want to use it.
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#5FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
Does it sound crazy? Most startups don’t understand why their product gains traction. They have less comprehension by this standard than the scientists with drugs. One of the beautiful things about knowledge is this: you don’t need knowledge of components to know the whole.
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#6FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
That's very common actually! The mechanism of action for many drugs is unknown. And then it gets even weirder with psychoactive drugs: eventually the answer is "this drug effects this neurotransmitter which gives you this subjective first person experience, and we don't really know why". It brings up a lot of philosophical and existential questions!
How do people come to find these drugs then? If you don't have a theory about how something works, what would make you test whether it works?
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#7The article mentions Metformin's use in preventing Long Covid. More info on that from Eric Topol's blog: https://erictopol.substack.com/p/preventing-long-covid
The original study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4375620
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#8FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
Sorry bro, human biology is infinitely more complex than your CRUD app.
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#9FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
The process for approving a new drug essentially requires proving that they are safe and also have sufficient efficacy, and usually also that the balance of the two (aka benefit:risk) is an improvement over a reasonable existing comparator.
There are plenty of drugs I can think of (even relatively modern, specialised drugs) for which we kinda understand some parts of the mechanism of action, but not other parts.
Also, given how difficult and competitive developing new drugs is, the incentive is to do the minimum (as above) for approval in the shortest time possible.
Re: What is metformin's secret sauce?
#10FTA: "But until now, scientists have been unable to determine how, exactly, the drug works." Try that next time you submit a PR: Yeah... it works, but "I am unable to determine how exactly". I find this concept absolutely mind blowing. We take drugs that the creators of the drugs don't understand how they work. I realize that biology is hard to understand, but this sounds crazy.
Does it sound crazy? Most startups don’t understand why their product gains traction. They have less comprehension by this standard than the scientists with drugs. One of the beautiful things about knowledge is this: you don’t need knowledge of components to know the whole.
Sure. However the implications if your stupid sass app [0] fails or not is not in the same league (IMHO) as messing with humans biology.
[0]: Yes there may be medical sass apps that are more serious