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

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

#51

Post by chenja »

w1ntermute wrote: post #41
timr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The thing is this kind of idea is not new." ...most startup companies aren't doing anything new. How many different food-delivery services has YC funded? Photo-sharing services? Video startups? AirBnB wasn't anything new in 2007, either. Dropbox was criticized because everyone knew that file sharing had been done before. This goes back to what I was saying about biotech being stodgy: the one thing the software indus…

> ...most startup companies aren't doing anything new. How many different food-delivery services has YC funded? Photo-sharing services? Video startups? AirBnB wasn't anything new in 2007, either. Dropbox was criticized because everyone knew that file sharing had been done before. There's a fundamental difference between trying something again where the customers weren't receptive and trying something again where the…

We definitely didn't invent systems biology for drug discovery. But Google didn't invent search engines either, I think that we have a fresh and novel approach which is really differentiated by the details.

Another thing I think is different about the industries is that while there are tons of food delivery and photo-sharing startups, there's no really effective/disease modifying treatments for common diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, ALS, etc, so I think there's plenty of space for any number of new approaches to be tested in the field. I feel it's more worthwhile than pumping billions more into failed antibodies against beta amyloid, as seems to be the trend nowadays.

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

#52

Post by chenja »

chuie wrote: post #34
mswen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first thought - my other comment put the initial onus on the journalist for creating a strawman opponent. However, when writing my second comment with a little history of systems biology - including within large pharma - I thought I should go watch the video. The founders basically say the same kind of stuff in their video. So we cannot blame it all on the journalist.

Ahh, I should have watched the video before I had the knee-jerk reaction to be so charitable. They could have just done what grad students are basically trained to do: use your narrow expertise to bullshit people and tie in some buzzwords that grant funding agencies like to hear. I hope I am just being cynical and that YC knows what they are doing here.

Our video definitely was geared toward a lay audience, but we tried not to use buzzwords and bullshit and to explain the science in a more accessible way. I'm curious to know what what bothered you about the video and we will try to communicate better - at least for me, conveying scientific ideas in an understandable way has been pretty challenging and I had hoped we did a good job in the video.

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

#53

Post by chenja »

w1ntermute wrote: post #33
chuie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to presume that I don't really understand the company then, because the founders and advisers should certainly know more than I do about drug discovery.

> the founders and advisers should certainly know more than I do about drug discovery Unfortunately, the operative word here appears to be "should."

We are definitely not experts in regards to pharma (neither Alice or I have experience working in pharma) but our advisors include pharma consultants and senior scientists. We're constantly engaging them and meeting with pharma execs and scientists almost daily to learn what has and hasn't worked, and have received a lot of feedback about how to bring potential new drugs to patients. There's a line between being naive and being jaded and we are trying to stick to being as realistic as possible, and value any new information or feedback, if you know anything that's contrary to our experience.

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

#54

Post by w1ntermute »

timr wrote: post #46
w1ntermute wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...most startup companies aren't doing anything new. How many different food-delivery services has YC funded? Photo-sharing services? Video startups? AirBnB wasn't anything new in 2007, either. Dropbox was criticized because everyone knew that file sharing had been done before. There's a fundamental difference between trying something again where the customers weren't receptive and trying something again where the…

The difference between success and failure in biotech lead generation is finding a good lead. That's something that is strongly influenced by luck. I can point to famous researchers who have made entire careers out of this sort of momentary serendipity, actually.

Yes, that is exactly my point. You cannot iterate your way to a serendipitous discovery.

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

#55

Post by w1ntermute »

chenja wrote: post #51
w1ntermute wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...most startup companies aren't doing anything new. How many different food-delivery services has YC funded? Photo-sharing services? Video startups? AirBnB wasn't anything new in 2007, either. Dropbox was criticized because everyone knew that file sharing had been done before. There's a fundamental difference between trying something again where the customers weren't receptive and trying something again where the…

We definitely didn't invent systems biology for drug discovery. But Google didn't invent search engines either, I think that we have a fresh and novel approach which is really differentiated by the details. Another thing I think is different about the industries is that while there are tons of food delivery and photo-sharing startups, there's no really effective/disease modifying treatments for common diseases such a…

> We definitely didn't invent systems biology for drug discovery. But Google didn't invent search engines either

This is a flawed analogy, because Google's success is largely attributable to business model innovation (AdSense), rather than any core technology, such as PageRank. After all, Robin Li published Rankdex two years before Brin/Page published PageRank, and we all know how trivial it is to engineer around software patents.

> Another thing I think is different about the industries is that while there are tons of food delivery and photo-sharing startups, there's no really effective/disease modifying treatments for common diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, ALS, etc, so I think there's plenty of space for any number of new approaches to be tested in the field.

That's because the bottleneck in tech is (a) identifying problems actually worth solving and (b) a business model that will lead to a sustainable company. Achieving success means creating a business and iterating to a position of dominance. There was never any question regarding the technical feasibility of Airbnb's site or Uber's app. It was (and still is) all about things like whether Airbnb could create trust between hosts and guests, and whether Uber could navigate the regulatory landscape.

The biomedical space could not be more different. Everyone with a half a clue knows that neurodegenerative diseases are a problem. Nobody who knows the industry is questioning that tons of customers for your (potential) product exist, or that they'll pay boatloads of money for a treatment or cure. The gigantic elephant in the room is whether your product works. Nothing else really matters.

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

#56

Post by timr »

w1ntermute wrote: post #54
timr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between success and failure in biotech lead generation is finding a good lead. That's something that is strongly influenced by luck. I can point to famous researchers who have made entire careers out of this sort of momentary serendipity, actually.

Yes, that is exactly my point. You cannot iterate your way to a serendipitous discovery.

Actually, that's the only way you get to a serendipitous discovery: you make lots of shots, and some of them go in the goal.

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

#57

Post by mswen »

chenja wrote: post #44
mswen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't currently have access to those publications and not willing to pay just to read these articles but from the titles, abstracts and citations it sounds like basically you are taking a systems biology and GWAS approach? The Institute for Systems Biology has been around since 2000. I remember interviewing people in an internal systems biology group at one of the largest pharma companies in the world in 2004 and w…

I really appreciate your feedback and of course we have studied a lot of what worked (and mostly, didn't work) in systems biology over the past decade, but the field has shifted dramatically since 2004. A lot more data is available, and experiments are designed much more carefully nowadays. In fact, the thing we worry about most is that the field still isn't rigorous enough and the quality of the data still isn't goo…

Thanks I will shoot you an email. Your response in this thread is the kind of more nuanced and accurate positioning of what you are doing and why systems biology might now be ripe to make a real difference in the drug discovery phase. It really isn't that hard of a message to convey.

I have been doing other things since 2004 and not following pharma and biotech closely. It appears that what has happened is large pharma invested in systems biology in the early 2000's and by the end of the decade had let it fade. It may also be true that it never made it into specific disease groups, like neurological.

Systems Biology feels a little like AI in the software field. It feels so intuitive that it will one day make a big difference, but there have been many big investments and disappointments over the years, but each time it makes a resurgence we get a lot of advancement in narrow domains. And, it still feels like one day, maybe soon we will get breakthrough's in more general AI and maybe you will lead the way with SB.

A certain confidence, even brashness of youth is ok, but please understand how "tinny" it sounds to people who have been around for one or two boom/bust cycles. Forgive us our cynicism.

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

#58

Post by dekhn »

chenja wrote: post #49
lvs wrote: post #6

> But Verge Genomics is able to cure brain diseases 1000x more quickly than big pharma by using algorithms Guffaw. Tech journalism at its finest. The company sounds great, but I'm not sure Techcrunch is really doing them a lot of favors by just making stuff up.

The 1000X number should only be attached to "cheaper", and comes from in vivo and in vitro validation experiments we have done; our drug hit rate was almost 1000X higher than high-throughput screens from the literature, and our total spend to get to our one drug lead was almost that many times cheaper than what we learned that pharma spends. We think we are faster as well (our first proof-of-concept study took about…

So you've got one drug lead, and haven't gotten anything to market yet that I can tell- are you leads in Phase I, II, or III trials now?

It is highly misleading to use the term cure in this case. You simply have no data to support that your costs are any lower than pharma until you actually show people being cured, and I think Phase II or III is the actual point where you can claim initial cure results, and it's not until the drug has been widely deployed for years without side effects that you can claim it's a treatment or a cure.

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

#59

Post by w1ntermute »

timr wrote: post #56
w1ntermute wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is exactly my point. You cannot iterate your way to a serendipitous discovery.

Actually, that's the only way you get to a serendipitous discovery: you make lots of shots, and some of them go in the goal.

> you make lots of shots, and some of them go in the goal

That's not iteration, that's banging your head against a wall and praying for a miracle. Iteration implies methodically and continuously moving towards an optimal solution, not heading back to the RNG after each failed attempt.

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