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Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

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Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#51

Post by rsheridan6 »

mattmanser wrote: post #32
rsheridan6 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big companies that already have treatments for diabetes (for example) definitely have an interest in not curing it, but a small startup would be happy to make millions destroying a multibillion dollar industry.

People upvoting this are dreamers as that industry costs a phenomenal amount of money to put something through trials. Millions is a trivial amount on what you could throw down the drain and end up with no actual product. It's not vulnerable to a startup as a startup can't practically enter that market. You'd need to be producing something else first. And small? Not gonna cut it. Something that works on mice and even…

There are lots of pharmaceutical startups.

And, yeah, drug development is high risk. In other news, the sky is still blue.

Type 1 diabetes is still a pretty big market even if you had a one shot cure. There are hundreds of thousands of type 1 diabetics. If they pay a thousand dollars each (a steal at that price), that's hundreds of millions of dollars. For comparison, there are a few thousand people with CML, but that didn't stop Gleevec from being developed for it (it's very expensive).

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#52

Post by grandalf »

carbocation wrote: post #45

Hacker News reminds me of my first year of med school. Everyone is smart and fundamentally clueless about human pathophysiology. It's a wonderful thing, learning about the fruits of devilishly challenging science. But it's also a conspiratorial time. I suspect the reason is that first year med students suddenly feel empowered by the small amounts of knowledge that they have gained. HNers probably feel empowered for a…

Would it follow from your argument that Weissman is either too foolish, disinterested, or arrogant to pursue the next step of animal trials that would have made human trials more likely?

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#53

Post by yummyfajitas »

LaGrange wrote: post #49
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what if you have no presence at all in that extremely big market? In addition to the big ones, there are dozens of smaller companies with the cash and the experience in drug development that would jump at the opportunity to cure type 1 diabetes. Unless the risks vastly outweigh the rewards, which seems to have been the case here.

If you have "no presence at all" then you either have no money, in which case you can't really afford entering it (in this case, anyway), or you have the money, but then the above rules still apply. Effectively it would be better to market your mediocre product to physicians than to kill the cash-cow. Also, large risks are actually typical for this type of research. It's expensive and risky, so it has to give really…

Google had no presence at all in the spreadsheet market in 2005. I guess they really couldn't afford to enter the spreadsheet market.

Too bad, because if google had money, and the above rules didn't apply, then google might create a free spreadsheet web service that competes with MS Excel even at the risk of destroying a gigantic cash cow owned by somebody else.

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#54

Post by karsa »

detst wrote: post #48
carbocation wrote: post #45

Hacker News reminds me of my first year of med school. Everyone is smart and fundamentally clueless about human pathophysiology. It's a wonderful thing, learning about the fruits of devilishly challenging science. But it's also a conspiratorial time. I suspect the reason is that first year med students suddenly feel empowered by the small amounts of knowledge that they have gained. HNers probably feel empowered for a…

While I can't really disagree with you, I don't think it's crazy to think that there are many influential people and organizations that have a strong interest in seeing that we avoid potential cures for common diseases. As such, I don't think this type of reaction is necessarily based largely in ignorance. Then again, I'm largely ignorant on this subject so I'm certainly not making any accusations in this case.

One such case is of Barry Marshall and H.Pylori, he was awarded the nobel price in 2005 for discovering the cure to ulcers, (antibiotics) but he first discovered the cure in 1983 and after about 10 years of 'trying' to convince the medical community of which (Glaxo who was dominant in that market) was making 90% of their profits from Zantac (an anti acid treatment) - (known inside as the 'Zantac years'), they were accused of thwarting his discovery. Tired of the lack of interest, in about 1992 he did a live experiment on himself by swallowing a wapping dose of H.pylori and induced an ulcer, then proceeded to cure this with a course of antibiotics. He did this in the glare of the media and thereby changed the course of treatment worldwide for ulcers... How many would do that?

However, I agree with the point though that too many HNers often seem to be naive about the larger picture which I guess we could all be accused of in some way.

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#55

Post by rsheridan6 »

mcherm wrote: post #42
rsheridan6 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big companies that already have treatments for diabetes (for example) definitely have an interest in not curing it, but a small startup would be happy to make millions destroying a multibillion dollar industry.

The small startup doesn't have the 10s to 100s of millions of dollars that it takes to get a drug approved in the US. So they would be happy to do it but are incapable.

Google "drug startup" and you'll see that's not true. Startups in that field have to be larger scale than a ycombinator startup, but they do exist.

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#56

Post by grandalf »

donw wrote: post #21
dennisgorelik wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a classic example of an area where government can NOT do better than business, because government sucks at innovation. There are plenty of companies that are not selling insulin, so they would be interested to be able to sell diabetes cure. Assuming the chances of developing the cure are reasonably good.

Wow, massive strawman. The government sucks at innovation? Who do you think funded and developed ARPANet? You know, the network we're using to communicate right now. Upon which countless businesses have been built. Nuclear power? Government. First electronic computer? Government. Furthermore, when it comes to drug discovery, that 'evil government' has one advantage over businesses, because they have no profit motive.…

To paraphrase: The government allocates dollars obtained via taxation to the development of military technology, which often finds unintended peaceful uses.

The scientists who develop military technology (weaponized nuclear, a nuclear-proof decentralized communication grid, code braking machines, etc.) are simply hired to build it or to weaponize promising areas of reasearch.

Anyone with lots of money and the desire to develop powerful weapons would have developed the innovations you cite. To credit "government" implies that something about the government (other than money and the desire for weapons) is responsible for the success.

Any dictator could do precisely the same thing with sufficient money. Fortunately for those of us in the US, our economic system results in incredible wealth, and the taxes generated by it can buy lots of weapons tech.

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#57

Post by carbocation »

grandalf wrote: post #52
carbocation wrote: post #45

Hacker News reminds me of my first year of med school. Everyone is smart and fundamentally clueless about human pathophysiology. It's a wonderful thing, learning about the fruits of devilishly challenging science. But it's also a conspiratorial time. I suspect the reason is that first year med students suddenly feel empowered by the small amounts of knowledge that they have gained. HNers probably feel empowered for a…

Would it follow from your argument that Weissman is either too foolish, disinterested, or arrogant to pursue the next step of animal trials that would have made human trials more likely?

My sense is that he followed the basic science, working deeply in stem cell biology and adding significantly to our knowledge. This is another important route to convincing people that they should pursue something like stem cells - if you know how they do what they do, then you can make educated guesses about how to prevent side effects, too.

So, to the contrary, I think he's done many things over the past 10 years to make human trials possible!

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#58

Post by narrator »

FraaJad wrote: post #40

Is America the only country in the world where he could get his drugs trial tested and put into market? There are umpteen number of pharma companies in the developing countries which are ready to take a working product to their market. Why not use them?

Good point. I think the French are the only ones that develop any decent pharmaceuticals outside the U.S. One of the most successful French pharmaceuticals is Tianeptine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianeptine

It's sort of a French Prozac but with a number of unique benefits that Prozac doesn't have. It's approved in several European countries but NOT in the U.K, and is only available in the U.S on the imported pharmaceutical grey market. Once it goes out of patent, and if it has not been approved for use in the U.S, it will NEVER be approved, ever, for any use in the U.S. That's because nobody would pay the 100s of millions of dollars to approve a drug that a competitor can produce as a generic.

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#59

Post by grandalf »

carbocation wrote: post #57
grandalf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it follow from your argument that Weissman is either too foolish, disinterested, or arrogant to pursue the next step of animal trials that would have made human trials more likely?

My sense is that he followed the basic science, working deeply in stem cell biology and adding significantly to our knowledge. This is another important route to convincing people that they should pursue something like stem cells - if you know how they do what they do, then you can make educated guesses about how to prevent side effects, too. So, to the contrary, I think he's done many things over the past 10 years t…

Do you think his research will result in type I diabetes being cured in humans in our lifetimes?

Re: Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials

#60

Post by rsheridan6 »

detst wrote: post #48
carbocation wrote: post #45

Hacker News reminds me of my first year of med school. Everyone is smart and fundamentally clueless about human pathophysiology. It's a wonderful thing, learning about the fruits of devilishly challenging science. But it's also a conspiratorial time. I suspect the reason is that first year med students suddenly feel empowered by the small amounts of knowledge that they have gained. HNers probably feel empowered for a…

While I can't really disagree with you, I don't think it's crazy to think that there are many influential people and organizations that have a strong interest in seeing that we avoid potential cures for common diseases. As such, I don't think this type of reaction is necessarily based largely in ignorance. Then again, I'm largely ignorant on this subject so I'm certainly not making any accusations in this case.

I'm sure the shareholders of Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and others would like to squelch a cure for diabetes to protect their markets, just like any established company would like to squelch disruptive technologies. So what? What are they going to do about it if some startup cures diabetes?

That's all you really need to know about any story about big, evil companies supposedly suppressing new technology.

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