Verge Genomics (YC S15) Wants to Cure Neurodegenerative Diseases with Algorithms

Verge Genomics (YC S15) Wants to Cure Neurodegenerative Diseases with Algorithms
techcrunch.com

Can you point us to a link that has a more substantive discussion of the approach that you are taking?

In my opinion, YC has no idea what they're doing in biotech. Here's a much more credible neuro disease startup that was recently launched: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/05/14/former-...

I'm sure Alice and Jason are very intelligent and motivated, but the smart money's on Marc Tessier-Lavigne any day of the week. The industry dynamics of biotech are totally different - the small and nimble upstart with unconventional thinking rarely wins.

I do have to wonder, however, when having a focus on neurodegenerative diseases that are largely seen as proteopathies, how useful a method that is presumably targeting only gene expression can be, which is what I assume you're targeting. If the view of diseases like PD as prion-like diseases with perhaps randomly misfolded proteins that recruit others and propagate through the brain is correct, for example, will targeting gene expression be able to do that much beyond treating symptoms? And if targeting genes that are not necessarily

I'm divided on the usual search-of-preapproved-drug approach too. On the one hand, it vastly lowers costs, speeds up trials, and can actually make development somewhat feasible for startups, but on the other, it does really feel like searching through a bunch of drug candidates that have no reason why they'd be effective for your targets. It's unfortunate we don't have a better approach here. And of course, as I'm sure you know, success in mouse models often translates to nothing at all in humans.

I'd be curious to know what sort of genomic data you're actually using for your analysis.

Again, though, it's great to see a startup working in this area, and I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with.

It doesn't help that here, I think, we're seeing a community and media largely centered around software development trying to deal with a field that is far, far riskier, and has far less certainty at every step. Good ideas in software might not catch on, but good ideas in science more often than not turn out to be entirely wrong. Do a closed beta of your software, too, and while your users might not end up liking the software much, it's very unlikely that it's just going to fundamentally fail to work at all. Clinical trials can often end up that way.