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Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

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Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#51

Post by littlestymaar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #42
nolongerlowres wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s friend. But both examples you gave (people having to fight for further diagnoses of outside-case health problems) are really common with private healthcare in the United States too - we’ve just shifted the burden of cost of treatment/quality of life decisions to private entities who typically are only interested in furthering shareholder value. To give a personal anecdote as well:…

> I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s friend. But both examples you gave (people having to fight for further diagnoses of outside-case health problems) are really common with private healthcare in the United States too - we’ve just shifted the burden of cost of treatment/quality of life decisions to private entities who typically are only interested in furthering shareholder value. Having a profit motive is only a se…

That's a big wall of text, with some nice ideas about how efficient markets are the solution to the problem, but you fail to realize that the US has a sub-par medical system (life expectancy is lagging quite far from most European countries) while being twice as costly as the OECD mean per capita.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#52

Post by AnthonyMouse »

danaris wrote: post #49
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s friend. But both examples you gave (people having to fight for further diagnoses of outside-case health problems) are really common with private healthcare in the United States too - we’ve just shifted the burden of cost of treatment/quality of life decisions to private entities who typically are only interested in furthering shareholder value. Having a profit motive is only a se…

> Having a profit motive is only a serious problem when there is insufficient competition. Otherwise companies that try to make outlandish profits would lose business to companies that offer better coverage for lower premiums by taking smaller profits. This works in an idealized free market. Health care is, for a variety of reasons, fundamentally incompatible with this, even if the powerful and wealthy interests with…

> This works in an idealized free market.

It works in any kind of market that isn't a dumpster fire. The closer to idealized it is the better it works, but it still works in real markets that actually exist. The people who sell towels to Walmart are not an "idealized free market" but it's close enough for practical purposes.

> Health care is, for a variety of reasons, fundamentally incompatible with this, even if the powerful and wealthy interests within it are not actively working to destroy some of the basic premises of a free market (like equal information).

Health care is not incompatible with it. People place a high value on life-saving treatment, but that's as it should be. It has a high value. If it costs a lot to provide or develop, it's worth the cost. The key is to not pay that cost in cases when it isn't necessary -- but you still want to in cases when it is.

The state of US health care and insurance regulations, however, are a dumpster fire. It doesn't have to be like this. The status quo is not optimal.

As you say, even just having real price transparency would mark a significant improvement.

Fixing that is hard because there are powerful interests behind the status quo, but the same interests are aligned against a single payer system. You can't use it as an argument against one and not the other.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#54

Post by nednar »

If there are people with expert knowledge here, can you explain how people heal from such kind of virus (or in general) if there are no counter measures external to the infected human?

I'm a little confused about how it works with virus vs bacteria.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#55

Post by [deleted] »

hditorkeif wrote: post #21

This is what antibodies do, right? How exactly does the body figure out how to configure the variable part of the antibody so that it binds? Does it just try countless variations until it finds a match? Can we take an antibody from a healed person and reverse engineer the binding protein?

[deleted]

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#56

Post by rolph »

nednar wrote: post #54

If there are people with expert knowledge here, can you explain how people heal from such kind of virus (or in general) if there are no counter measures external to the infected human? I'm a little confused about how it works with virus vs bacteria.

in short terms, the immune system does it, but it has to learn what it is first.

there are "tags" on the virus, these are antigens.

the immune system samples the antigens presents them to the "antibody librarian" and the librarian publishes a bunch of antibodies that stick to the virus antigen.

This can take some time to get to this state, during this time the virus is replicating making you ill and doing damage.

when enough antibodies are being produced, new copies of the virus will be tagged with the antibody and destroyed with haste.

here is a big read with all the real [complicated] terms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system

this is basically the same process for virus, bacteria, and even some nonliving materials.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#57

Post by AnthonyMouse »

littlestymaar wrote: post #51
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s friend. But both examples you gave (people having to fight for further diagnoses of outside-case health problems) are really common with private healthcare in the United States too - we’ve just shifted the burden of cost of treatment/quality of life decisions to private entities who typically are only interested in furthering shareholder value. Having a profit motive is only a se…

That's a big wall of text, with some nice ideas about how efficient markets are the solution to the problem, but you fail to realize that the US has a sub-par medical system (life expectancy is lagging quite far from most European countries) while being twice as costly as the OECD mean per capita.

I understand why people use this talking point. It's easy to say and the reasons why it's nonsense involve details.

You can't compare life expectancy without accounting for cultural or geographic differences. The US has a higher rate of motor vehicle fatalities (as a result of driving more), more suicides and drug overdoses etc. These bring down life expectancy because they disproportionately impact the young. The US also has a lower population density which worsens emergency response times.

But one of the biggest factors is that the US system is really terrible for people without insurance. The outcomes for US patients with health insurance are better than they are just about anywhere. Lack of insurance is an economic problem, solvable by instituting a UBI or similar so that the people who can't currently afford insurance become able to.

One of the reasons why the US system is more expensive was already described above -- paying market prices when other countries use price controls has the US subsidizing medical R&D for the rest of the world.

There are also several other reasons costs are high specifically in the US. For example, there aren't enough residency slots but residency is required by law, which limits the supply of doctors. The FDA requires extremely expensive clinical trials but doesn't pay for them, which makes it nearly impossible to bring a new medicine to market that isn't under patent. There is a major lack of price transparency which prevents patients paying out of pocket or with high deductible insurance from comparing prices for non-emergency procedures. These are regulatory failures, not market failures.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#58

Post by hammock »

rolph wrote: post #45
hammock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically such a protein would be delivered via infusion (IV), I believe.

the main trophic target of this virus is lung tissue. a nebulizer would deliver the mRNA-Fc complex to the lung tissue. the other way around would look a lot like a classic vaccine delivered by injection, and encapsulate the mRNA into a vesicle that targets antigen presenting cells in the lymphatic system which then presents the mRNA product as an antigen-MHC complex to specify what antibody to generate.

Deliver mRNA, or a protein?

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#59

Post by rolph »

hammock wrote: post #58
rolph wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the main trophic target of this virus is lung tissue. a nebulizer would deliver the mRNA-Fc complex to the lung tissue. the other way around would look a lot like a classic vaccine delivered by injection, and encapsulate the mRNA into a vesicle that targets antigen presenting cells in the lymphatic system which then presents the mRNA product as an antigen-MHC complex to specify what antibody to generate.

Deliver mRNA, or a protein?

both or either dependent on the therapeutic strategy.

this is also something that is not limited to corona virus, this is the basis of a recombinant vaccine that can be adjusted for any antigen.

Re: Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design

#60

Post by natch »

astroalex wrote: post #39
natch wrote: post #37

Strange site. The heading implies that they are attempting to design things that help science, but if you drill in to the pages for "new to fold.it" and FAQ, it never actually says that any of the results are used by anyone. Instead it says that it's all a game and the only science goal is to prove that humans are capable (just like computers) of doing this. I wonder if this is really all it is, or if the writers of…

I happened to work in the lab at the University of Washington that helped maintain the game as an undergrad. Here's a published scientific article about the use of Foldit for science: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09304 (I'm not disagreeing that the website is badly designed.)

Thanks. I’d quibble about the design word... the design is ok; it’s the wording that is lacking. Or some clear thinking. I mean for all the effort they are spending on this, it would take like one paragraph or less to clear things up. It could be fixed with five minutes of effort.
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