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Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

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Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#61

Post by dekhn »

naveenspark wrote: post #24
mef wrote: post #11

Does anyone know why this approach is "viewed as a rogue project by the immunology community"? Is it just because it's new, or is there something more fundamental that conflicts with established immunology?

Hi all, this is Naveen from Immunity Project YC team. The fact that we are using ML to identify epitopes that are the preferred targets on the virus for HIV controllers is key to what makes our project unique. This is a newer approach for developing a vaccine and therefore makes it "rogue."

I can easily find plenty of papers using ML for HIV epitope analysis.

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#62

Post by kyro »

dekhn wrote: post #61
naveenspark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi all, this is Naveen from Immunity Project YC team. The fact that we are using ML to identify epitopes that are the preferred targets on the virus for HIV controllers is key to what makes our project unique. This is a newer approach for developing a vaccine and therefore makes it "rogue."

I can easily find plenty of papers using ML for HIV epitope analysis.

Mind linking to a few you find particularly insightful? I'm sure many of us would be more than appreciative.

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#64

Post by naveenspark »

cpursley wrote: post #54

I'm all for this; more power to them. However, HIV/AIDS is already very preventable and had been on the decline for a decade or more. I'd rather see something like this effort, but for cancer. A disease that affects many more people. Actually, what I really want to see it a focus on stopping poaching, whaling, habitat destruction and ocean acidification. Even with all the disease, humans don't seem to have issues rep…

HIV/AIDS is a giant problem. North of 35MM people are living with HIV worldwide and more are infected every day. Yes we have made strides in reducing infection rates, but we are far from solving this problem with existing approaches. To put this in context, nearly 5,000 people a day die from AIDS. That is like 10 747s falling out of the sky every single day. The only solution is a vaccine which is why we are doing what we are doing. There are many big problems for us to solve on our planet. HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest and hardest to solve.

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#65

Post by naveenspark »

sgift wrote: post #41
naveenspark wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people who are living w/ HIV worldwide can't afford to pay for treatment. From our perspective it doesn't make sense to charge for something that the people who need it most just can't pay for. By making our project non profit we can focus on the real goal, which is ending HIV/AIDS and not creating ROI for shareholders. Yes we will need to raise significant funding over the lifetime of the project to comp…

Is there some special "trick" that makes your team/approach so efficient or (just) the usual ones, e.g. less overhead due to small size, less bureaucracy than big pharma and so on?

Yes our overhead is far lower. Our other "trick" is that several members of our team are multi-talented. For example Dr. Herst can do tissue culture work, formulation development, analytical chemistry, and immunochemistry.

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#67

Post by jjoonathan »

rdl wrote: post #63

This is going to be really inconvenient for all the people who say "sure, you are good at making photo sharing apps and dating sites, but you don't cure cancer or anything."

I suspect that those people value the fact that this is happening more than the fact that they don't "get" to complain about it not happening.

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#68

Post by Buttons840 »

cma wrote: post #53
andrewfong wrote: post #50

From the FAQ: "But, there are certain spots on HIV that rarely mutate, and these are the same highly specific targets that controller immune systems already recognize naturally. Our vaccine trains your immune system to attack those weak spots so that the virus is crippled even when it mutates. In other words, our vaccine shows the prime targets to your immune system so that it does not have to waste time and energy t…

I think they mean they train the immune system by creating an antigen, not an antibody, that mimics or is identical to the nonmutating antigen on the virus. Your immune system upregulates appropriate antibodies on its own through a feedback effect when certain cells (B cell?) that have randomly generated embedded antibodies on their cell membranes come across an antigen. These cells begin to divide faster, and the ch…

Fascinating! What do you think the best resource is for brushing up on this stuff? I haven't had a good biology class for a while.

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#69

Post by [deleted] »

naveenspark wrote: post #24
mef wrote: post #11

Does anyone know why this approach is "viewed as a rogue project by the immunology community"? Is it just because it's new, or is there something more fundamental that conflicts with established immunology?

Hi all, this is Naveen from Immunity Project YC team. The fact that we are using ML to identify epitopes that are the preferred targets on the virus for HIV controllers is key to what makes our project unique. This is a newer approach for developing a vaccine and therefore makes it "rogue."

[deleted]

Re: Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator

#70

Post by gms7777 »

[deleted] wrote: post #69
naveenspark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi all, this is Naveen from Immunity Project YC team. The fact that we are using ML to identify epitopes that are the preferred targets on the virus for HIV controllers is key to what makes our project unique. This is a newer approach for developing a vaccine and therefore makes it "rogue."

[deleted]

Yes, it stands for machine learning. The one comment I saw the phrase "Mind linking" in looks as if it was short for "Do you mind linking to...".
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