
DRACOs may be a cure for all viral diseases - Cozumel
https://www.inverse.com/article/16784-meet-todd-rider-the-man-who-maybe-probably-cured-most-of-the-viruses-on-earth
======
hannob
I have read a couple of similar stories. While there may be a legit case for
funding this work (I don't know the details) one should be aware of one thing:
There are a lot of promising preclinical results, and the vast majority never
turns into any medical treatment. I think the article completely fails to
reflect that and gives the impression that turning this research into a
treatment is just a matter of proper funding.

As far as I understand there currently only exist a few animal lab studies
that indicate this treatment works. Especially in these preclinical settings
many studies turn out to be not reproducible. But even if they are, there's a
very long way to a treatment in humans.

~~~
api
> There are a lot of promising preclinical results, and the vast majority
> never turns into any medical treatment.

There are a lot of promising startups and the vast majority fail.

Science needs to take a _lot_ more risks, not less, and be willing to fail. If
science is now unwilling to take risks or fail, science is over as anything
other than a cargo cult built around the science of previous generations.

~~~
pjc50
Great! Who's going to pay for those risks to be taken?

~~~
Beltiras
Anyone, everyone. Crowdfunding science should be done more.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
So science will become "throw money at the people who can win a social media
popularity contest". How is that any better than what we have now? Everything
about it seems worse.

~~~
Beltiras
I'm not saying it's a perfect solution. It's better than what we have today
and that is all we really can ask for at any given time.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I work in academia. Funding is always scarce. It does not come out of the sky.

Example: If the grant says that all proposal text must be in 11 point Times
New Roman font, and you do 12 point Times New Roman, in the trash you go.

People giving vast sums of money want to make sure every penny is carefully
spent.

As for crowdsourcing research, well, go for it. It's just that we already have
a method for this. It's called "taxes."

Edit: inevitable tax argument deflection: the vast majority of the US federal
budget is, as Thomas L Friedman put it, "an insurance company with a
military." Research as a portion is teensy-tiny. Our society could easily fund
federal research - "we" just choose not to.

~~~
Beltiras
I should have been more explicit. When I say "everyone" I mean collectively
through taxes. I think both methods have merit.

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openasocket
Not a virologist, but this seems over-hyped. There wasn't a lot of info on how
DRACO works, but it seems to cause cell destruction on detection of double-
stranded RNA, which means it will only work on double-stranded RNA viruses.
I'm not sure how many human viral infections are caused by double-stranded RNA
viruses, but from skimming the wikipedia page it doesn't seem to be many
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
stranded_RNA_viruses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
stranded_RNA_viruses)). The main example the wiki page gives is rotaviruses,
which do cause a lot of deaths of children in developing countries, but there
is a vaccine available.

The fact that he explicitly is saying this could treat ALL viral diseases
makes me skeptical. Maybe I'm wrong, and most viruses produce dsRNA in some
form or another during infection.

~~~
virusduck
Am a virologist, and this is over-hyped, but not for that reason. The
PKR/dsRNA response pathway is activated by a number of non-dsRNA viruses.
There are double-stranded intermediates for lots of viruses, including
herpesviruses, that we don't necessarily appreciate or know exactly how
they're activated.

The major issue is that these are macromolecules, and it is incredibly
difficult to deliver these in vivo. Every pharmaceutical encounters this
problem, and the fact that it isn't really addressed is probably why no
companies are biting.

There is some mouse data in the (single) paper, but it is missing some
important controls. 1. He never shows that the protein makes it into the cells
of the liver/kidney/lung/etc, just that there is some identifiable protein in
the organs, and 2. he doesn't control for general immune activation from the
injection of the protein, even though he has a control DRACO in the tissue
culture experiments.

Also, though it may be overkill, he never shows IFAs of the actual DRACO
protein inside the cells from tissue culture.

~~~
dogma1138
Will it be possible to combine this technique with genetic engineering to
cause your cells to produce these proteins in the first place?

~~~
virusduck
Sure, but you still have the question of delivery mechanism in vivo, and how
to target. Also, I'm not sure you'd want this produced permanently. There may
be many off-target effects from over-production. Proteins that require
oligomerization can be overexpressed in cells to activate them without the
target present. This would be bad in an organism.

------
hprotagonist
98% of the time, "i had a neat idea 15 years ago, but we still need to test it
through phase I, II, and III" does _not_ become "I am the man who probably
cured all viral infections".

and he has exactly one paper, and it's in PlOS One.

Yawn.

~~~
danielmorozoff
I wouldn't dismiss this work that quickly. The idea is sound and came out of
the MIT Lincoln Lab and has been worked on for many years. If it's still
around, it probably does something

[https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/DRACO.html](https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/DRACO.html)

The Wright Brothers were just 2 guys in North Carolina...

~~~
hprotagonist
that's fine, but their publication count with this guy as an author is exactly
1. In 15 years, that's called "an idea that doesn't work."

~~~
danielmorozoff
Not exactly true.
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/301/5630/213.long](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/301/5630/213.long)

Furthermore, this man worked on bio-defense stuff-- very likely a large
majority of his work is not published for security reasons, as well as in
startups.

There are plenty of people working in science, that don't make their career
goals to publish in prestigious journals.

Real discoveries are rarely made at the pace required for securing tenure-
track positions in academia.

~~~
hprotagonist
That is another publication of his, yes. It's not clear that it's got much to
do with DRACO. In his science paper, they engineer B-lymphocytes to fluoresce
when they bind to target pathogens. 300-odd citations, which isn't too bad for
that field.

------
agnokapathetic
TL;DR for DRACOs

what it is: they made a poison which will kill a cell when two-parts of the
poison touch each other in a certain way (think bubble gum in mission
impossible). They've designed the parts of the poison so it _should_ only
trigger when a virus is present.

why no big pharma compnay will touch it: the criterion for "virus present,
KILL CELL" is potentially highly highly error prone, could easily go haywire
killing all the cells.

Contrast to Immunotherapy -- the state of the art in clinically approved
cancer treatments which uses the body's own immune system to selectively kill
cancer cells (which also faced significant finanical barriers to its
development), even if the signal goes haywire, the body's immune system still
has fail-safes to not killing all of its own cells.

disclaimer: i am not a biologist, but i took some basic college bio courses

From wikipedia: "Differentiation between infected and healthy cells is made
primarily via the length and type of RNA transcription helices present within
the cell. Most viruses produce long dsRNA helices during transcription and
replication. In contrast, uninfected mammalian cells generally produce dsRNA
helices of fewer than 24 base pairs during transcription. Cell death is
effected via one of the last steps in the apoptosis pathway in which complexes
containing intracellular apoptosis signaling molecules simultaneously bind
multiple procaspases. The procaspases transactivate via cleavage, activate
additional caspases in the cascade, and cleave a variety of cellular proteins,
thereby killing the cell."

From the paper
([http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2F...](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572.PDF))
:

"In its simplest form, a DRACO is a chimeric protein with one domain that
binds to viral dsRNA and a second domain (e.g., a procaspase-binding domain or
a procaspase) that induces apoptosis when two or more DRACOs crosslink on the
same dsRNA. If viral dsRNA is present inside a cell, DRACOs will bind to the
dsRNA and induce apoptosis of that cell. If viral dsRNA is not present inside
the cell, DRACOs will not crosslink and apoptosis will not occur."

------
ianlevesque
Isn't Y Combinator itself investing in this type of venture now?

------
kayhi
We're a start up in the science space working with research labs [1].

A big problem is certainly funding, but also how the funding is spent. We are
seeing researchers paying 3-4x for the exact same item.

[1] [https://labspend.com/](https://labspend.com/)

------
reasonattlm
A demonstration that DRACO works in pig cells for a problematic virus, which
you should take as less convincing than the existing in vivo mouse studies,
but was carried out by another research group not directly affiliated with the
original developer:

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00705-015-2392-4](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00705-015-2392-4)

DRACO, double-stranded RNA activated caspase oligomerizer, is a broadly
applicable antiviral technology that has been under development at a slow pace
for quite some time now. You might recall some publicity back in 2011, for
example, but that marked the results of years of earlier work. DRACO attacks
infected cells, not the viruses themselves, following the principle of finding
a common vulnerability to target rather than trying to tailor therapies to
every different variety of attacker. Despite technology demonstrations to show
effectiveness against a broad range of very different types of virus, and the
fact that this technology can in principle be applied to near any type of
virus, there is next to no ongoing funding for DRACO. It stands as an example
of the fact that you can build a better mousetrap and still have the world
ignore you. In this case DRACO is languishing despite grave concerns regarding
spreading viral resistance to existing drugs, and billions devoted to
constructing new drugs that are just more of the same.

Advocacy and philanthropy are often the only ways forward for a new medical
technology that is a radical departure from the present status quo. This is a
lesson to keep in mind when we talk about the various branches of medical
research. It is hard to obtain funding in the life sciences in any meaningful
fashion, and the organization of funding for any ongoing serious effort has
become a baroque effort involving many players, all of whom are operating with
perverse incentives that only serve to slow down progress and make funding
less effective on a dollar for dollar basis. For example the large funding
bodies are extremely risk-averse, and thus almost never fund the most
important early-stage and high-risk projects, the science that is actually
science, at the forefront and involving new discoveries. These funding bodies
only ever put money into ongoing development wherein which the researchers can
already demonstrate proof of concept and an understanding of the mechanisms
involved. Getting to that point for any new line of research requires creative
accounting and the help of philanthropic donations, and even so there is far
too little actual science taking place in major laboratories.

------
rurban
Maybe the easiest solution is to give the man a Nobel price. Technically it's
a breakthrough, and adjusting the method for more viruses is just a matter of
funding, which the Nobel price committee is responsible for.

~~~
gus_massa
I think they only have some studies in mice. And as all the initial research
there is a high chance that it will never be safe enough or effective enough
to be applied in humans.

The Nobel price is usually awarded after the technique is thoughtfully tested
and applied for many years, so then try to avoid the current fad.

------
quirkot
DRACO: Drugs Relieving Antigen Class 0

~~~
logfromblammo
I rolled a 14. Am I cured?

~~~
quirkot
logfromblammo used APSIRIN against INFLUENZA. Attack is successful. INFLUENZA
is vanquished.

You gained 14 exp.

------
throwaway2016a
If he can't find funding but there is a real problem to which the startup has
a promising solution, why not try to get acquired by a larger company that
does have the means to finish the research?

~~~
HillRat
He doesn't have an equity vehicle for the research -- he needs funds for his
university lab, but he's basically at a point where he needs more funding than
he can get from public sources, but his work is still considered too
speculatove for pharma companies, hence the "valley of death" monicker.

Plus, acquisition doesn't mean the research will continue. I consulted with a
med-tech startup a few years ago whose founders had, in a prior company,
developed a novel adjuvant that was extremely promising in a wide variety of
pharmaceutical applications. To commercialize the research, they were going to
close a funding deal with a top-5 PE company -- on September 11, 2001.
Needless to say, the funding fell through. They ended up selling the IP to a
major pharma company, but that company wasn't willing to put the research
dollars into proving out the science, so it sits on the shelf to this day.

------
sharemywin
not sure why they don't sell "shares" through one of the crowd funding sites.
I'd put a $1000 to make a few bucks for possible cure for viral infections but
not for a call to researcher.

~~~
jbmorgado
Shares? This is research in progress at the academia, not a company.

~~~
themihai
I think the question is why he doesn't register a company to sell shares(i.e.
IPO). Crowdfunding is nice but not everyone is a philanthropist.

~~~
sharemywin
I'm just saying I would put down 50x more if I could make money on it. Does
that make me an a __ __ __probably.

~~~
gus_massa
How much do you know about biotechnology? Clinical trials? Do you know the
alternative treatments that are under research in other universities?

The problem of crowfunding in areas you don't know is that it's very difficult
to distinguish between the real research breakthrough and the scams.

PS1: "Never invest more than you can afford to loose."

PS2: What about investing in a company that can make a blood analysis only
with a drop of blood?

~~~
sharemywin
I read it on the internet so it must be true. :)

