What we should really do is have an open source movement in Drugs: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93
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San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
81–90 of 94 posts
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you like to sign up for a buggy minimum viable drug treatment?
If I had terminal cancer, absolutely!
I'm with this guy, if I have terminal cancer. I'll try a remedy made from dirt if it has a chance. I mean what's to lose, at that point my body becomes a free testing lab.
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#83Many years ago, I worked in a lab where I synthesized a variant of Interferon using solid phase peptide synthesis. It was all manual work, using pretty basic materials. It's just a peptide after all.
I finished at 11 PM. Cleaned it up, walked across the street to probably one of the world's most respected Cancer Hospitals. Gave it to the MD on staff, he said we'll try it now. Right now.
A lot of things go on when people are at life and death cross roads. Lots of things out of the mainstream. When all hope is gone, sometimes miracles can happen.
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#84Many years ago, I worked in a lab where I synthesized a variant of Interferon using solid phase peptide synthesis. It was all manual work, using pretty basic materials. It's just a peptide after all. I finished at 11 PM. Cleaned it up, walked across the street to probably one of the world's most respected Cancer Hospitals. Gave it to the MD on staff, he said we'll try it now. Right now. A lot of things go on when peo…
Did you hear back from him? How'd it work?
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any time someone says something won't work, what they should be saying is "No one has figured out how to make this work yet".
Unless you're asserting that you have figured it out, I don't understand why you'd point this out.
Because negativity is a bane on scientific progress.
People who claim something can't be done are foolish. Claiming a negative - claiming something you can't prove - is anti-intellectual at best, downright ignorant at worst.
There is no need to claim something can't be done. It serves absolutely no purpose. The only possible outcome that negativity can have is to stop someone from trying, when really - thats the heart of scientific discovery. We can't fly, we can't break the sound barrier, we can't we can't we can't.
History is full of people who claim we can't. But history forgets those people, and remembers the ones who actually did.
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worse, I fear that cancer patients and their loved ones will get overly enthusiastic about this. Then, when they donate tons of money and it fails, they are out money, time, and a drug. This is the reason pharmaceutical companies are cautious about contacting patient advocacy groups.
Good point. This is something i wrestled with. It's very likely this will fail (for both social and scientific reasons). At the very least though if it fails for scientific reasons, since experiments will be openly disclosed (unlike the siloed process at pharma r&d) - we will learn something - even if that something is "don't try making this drug again".
If I am donating to a charity which funnels money to research, how is this all that different? I think you can tap into a similar set of population and motivations for the donations.
One of the upsides with this sort of approach is that you have a great opportunity to involve the donors in the overall process. The experiment can be used to provide a view into the nitty gritty of the scientific process and more specifically drug research. Of course to do this well will take a significant effort to communicate everything effectively.
On the other hand, as you mentioned, you don't want to create false hope. To mitigate this you would want to work on managing expectations on the potential results and consequences of those results are.
Either way you should be able to gather useful information/experience on both the scientific experiment and the social experiment.
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grants and big donors to push through preclinical and a for profit partner for clinical is my vision, but I am open minded to alternatives.
Doesn't that fall apart when the for profit partner needs to pay the other $990 million dollars and then still cannot patent the drug?
I don't know. It's certainly a risk, but there's only one way to find out. I think there are companies willing to do it (cipla is one that I'm thinking about approaching).
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a working scientist, and this really doesn't reflect my experience in the slightest.
The early stage research on 9ds was funded by the ACS.
It's possible to fund early state research using money from foundations, etc. But that wasn't the assertion given by the parent post - it was that the majority of early stage research is both non-corporate and non-government funded.
I'm very skeptical of that claim.
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I gather from the Hacker News profile you have that you are indeed the same person as the person profiled in the article kindly submitted here. (You would have replied just before I posted a second paragraph to my comment, quoting an earlier paper that I think must be your co-authored paper.) How did the earlier phases of research go?
Ah, yes, the Juggernauts of Biology. That was a fun article to write. Indeed, the professor we're critiquing (and also praising) was on my committee, and I had a copy of an early draft of the Juggernauts paper literally in my back pocket during my thesis defense [0]. That research is somewhat unrelated to what I'm doing - the more relevant paper is this (happily open access thanks to the NIH) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.…
Please update your profile's link to Project Marilyn. I almost skipped away and forgot about the whole thing when I saw that you weren't accepting donations. However, you are accepting donations, just at a different page.
Also, I donated some BTC and then felt like increasing it but browsers I use are now reporting coinbase in a redirect loop. You're losing money here, man.
Re: San Diego Researcher Crowdfunding Patent-Free Cancer Drug
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that fall apart when the for profit partner needs to pay the other $990 million dollars and then still cannot patent the drug?
I don't know. It's certainly a risk, but there's only one way to find out. I think there are companies willing to do it (cipla is one that I'm thinking about approaching).
I'd like to see more of a potential plan here - otherwise I'm afraid that making a drug un-patentable would make it /less/ likely that it goes to market.
I believe I've seen evidence of exactly that happening as margins for a drug are very low if it can't be protected (via IP), and the cost to bring a drug to market is so high.
I see many problems with current IP system - but I don't see how this is avoidable in a completely commoditizable generic drug market.
If I'm making some incorrect assumptions here, I'd love to know!