
MIT and the Demise of the Viral Infection - exabrial
http://blog.readingthinkingandwriting.com/?p=500
======
tokenadult
The obligatory link for any discussion of a speculative plea for research
funding like that is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and
Interpretation" by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to
interpret scientific research.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

Check each submission to Hacker News you read for how many of the important
issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the submission.

------
viraptor
Does anyone actually know how can we donate to that research? The whole thing
seems to be very poorly coordinated. I got very excited about previous news
regarding DRACO. Now I see even more news and I'm basically at the "shut up
and take my money" stage. It's the first time ever I'd be happy to donate
right away...

And here's where the things break down. Where's a paypal button? Where are the
bank details? Where's more information?

"If more than 10,000,000 people can contribute to the re-election campaign of
a certain President of the United States, just think what we can do with
DRACO." Sure we can. But here's the problem:

google: "draco research donate" - give up after 30 min with no relevant
results

google: "obama donate" - first link is to
<https://contribute.barackobama.com/>

Now please! Help me help you. Give me a chance to donate something.

------
bcoates
Pharmaceutical industry scientist and blogger Derek Lowe put up a post about
DRACO in 2011:
[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/08/22/dracos_new_a...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/08/22/dracos_new_antivirals_against_pretty_much_everything.php)

He generally positive about it (uncommon for him) but points out some likely
difficulties for real-world human use.

------
seldo
Previous coverage of DRACO on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771214> (March 2012)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2847675> (August 2011)

I believe there were some earlier threads as well but I'm not finding them in
a cursory search.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Hah! Check it out, negative karma for the win:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2847982>

So this is old news which I completely missed (I should have scrounged around
Google Scholar for the paper, if you are wondering here it is:
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572))
No further results in 2 years?

------
ChuckMcM
Somehow this reads like every pitch I've ever heard for funding a perpetual
energy machine. If you can cure the common cold you don't need funding, just
like if you can make energy out of nothing you don't need funding.

~~~
viraptor
They can't do that yet. As far as I understand, their idea works when applied
directly / on a micro scale, but they'd have to still solve the issues of mass
production and distribution through the organism.

Anyway, this seems very different from a perpetual energy machine pitch. If
you can reject what they're doing using very basic rules of physics/biology,
please do that. If you disagree that what they work on is possible, which part
is it?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Now believe me, I am not picking on you, I'm sharing my reasoning here.

Lets tease these two things apart :

 _"As far as I understand, their idea works when applied directly / on a micro
scale"_

So on the micro scale, with direct application, there are literally hundreds
of things which kill the common cold virus. My favorite happens to be soap.

But you and I would never believe that soap was some new cure for the common
cold because we have a (hopefully) good relationship with soap, and we know
that nobody that had their mouth washed out with soap for swearing in class
suddenly had a cold clear up.

 _" they'd have to still solve the issues of mass production and distribution
through the organism."_

This is the "tricky bit" like the thermodynamics are often the villain of free
energy schemes. Mass production isn't a problem because once we get to the
point where mass production is the only step between product and market there
will be infinite money available. The "distribution through the organism" is a
problem. People who solve that problem for a variety of drugs, people like
Alza, are worth billions of dollars because it is a problem.

The common theme in miracle cure and endless energy proposals is that they
can't avoid reality. We joke about the difference between theory and practice,
this is it.

I read a really earnest pitch about a car which used Titanium Dioxide
(massively abundant! really cheap!) the fact that ultraviolet light (in
sunlight) can split water into hydrogen and oxygen when it shines on water
that is in contact with Titanium dioxide [1], and a car with a sunroof of
water sloshing around that has a UV transparent top and a bottom painted with
Titanium Dioxide creating free oxygen and hydrogen that is to be recombined in
a fuel cell to power the car and get turned back into water.

It all works, fuel cells, titanium dioxide splitting water, making electricity
and electric cars. The problem is that there is only so much energy in
sunlight, 1kW per square meter at the best of times, and a car roof is at best
a square meter of surface area, and the typical car power plant, even in golf
carts, is at least 15kW. So no matter what you do, there isn't enough light to
fuel up your car. That said you could park it for a month, and then perhaps
drive it around for the day, but really useful? Not so much.

These guys have found another way to kill viruses. Their technique has some
benefits (like soap) in that viruses won't develop immunity to their method.
So to figure out a way to transport their method into a living mammal without
doing damage to the mammal requires some mice and inspiration, and very little
money. If you are engineering a solution (where the mice are just test cases
not part of the experiment directly) you can use cheap mice, if you want to
publish you probably want a line of genetically bred mice and they are more
expensive but not more than a few thousand dollars. Once you figure that step
out you have two parts of the treasure map. Now you move up to pigs or if your
feeling lucky, monkeys. That gets a bit more expensive but still not "omg
where am I going to find the money" expensive. At USC the bio guys were
getting $50,000 grants to come up with microbes that were better at eating
paper. They ran a full chemistry lab for a school year on that kind of money.
If you have a great idea you can save your pennies (its not going away if its
real) and fund yourself for that level of investment.

So in these kinds of pitches, its never "we just need money" it is _always_ we
need a solution to this insoluble problem. The money just keeps them in
noodles while they bang their head against the wall.

[1] [http://www.nersc.gov/news-publications/news/science-
news/201...](http://www.nersc.gov/news-publications/news/science-
news/2012/turning-water-into-hydrogen-fuel/)

~~~
Evbn
How is your argument different from one that would rebut every grant
application and VC pitch ever?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Grant applications, fine, they are focused on research where the only goal is
a paper, VC pitches though, those are predicated on a financial return on
investment.

Consider the notion of addressable market and intrinsic value. Lets say you
have a machine that turns dog poo into 24 kt gold. And you come to me asking
for funding. If you can demonstrate it works, then you can make small amounts
of gold already and collecting that until you get enough to get an arbitrary
amount of money would leave you with all the ownership, all the cash, and
insanely wealthy (until the floor fell out of the gold market)

Similarly if you develop a cure for cancer (or Herpes or HIV or all of the
above) all you need do is show that it can work in humans and the next Steve
Jobs who is dying of cancer (or HIV or whatever) and has nothing left will
seek you out. If it _does_ work they will pay you handsomely to be 'cured',
and now that they aren't going to be dead the will probably fund
productization. If nothing else, they provide a good example for the next
wealthy sick person.

The trick is that its "too good to be true" which means that if it is true, a
whole lot of expensive other stuff is now obsolete. That means that the
proposed offering will completely replace the previous market. I don't know
what the market for anti-virals are but just looking at the HIV drug cocktail
market is in in the billions if not trillions of dollars.

And while getting to the point where you can say it does or does not work on
humans can take time, as the inventor you either know or don't know, how to
get there. If you do, then you figure out a way to earn the money to fund the
development internally (since that gives you complete ownership) and if you
don't, especially if you don't and you're not really sure if you ever will,
you try to find someone else to pay the bills while you beat your head against
the problem.

So the VC sees risks in execution (can you get it to market, can you negotiate
the right contracts) but they generally shy away from risks where you need a
new kind of science even to get to the possible stage.

I always have high hopes but low expectations for these sorts of proposals.

------
zapdrive
"Sadly though, the one grant the team has from the National Institute of
Health is only sufficient to support one full-time researcher."

How much does it take to pay a researcher? I am sure if we drop 0.0001% lesser
bombs on Afghanistan/Iraq/and elsewhere, we would be able to support more
researchers for this noble cause.

------
joghSturgot
While this works in tissue culture...how one would get a protein into every
cell in our body is an interesting challenge...One that is much more
challenging than the author of the blog seems to think.

~~~
Gatsky
They gave it to mice in the actual study, and it still worked.

------
ForHumanity
I would like to thank you all for reading my article. I have spent most of my
life thus far in technology, coding since I was 10. This was back when the
TI99/4a was news and 32k was alot of elbo room.

About 14 years ago I decided to study Neuroscience so I could build a better
human/computer interface. Little did I know that I was igniting a latent
passion for the biosciences that would consume my free time hence forth and
thousands of dollars.

I related quickly to the biosciences because molecular physiology bears a
striking semblance to computer/software architecture.

Now, I have had an article published on my proposed targeted cancer
therapeutic (<http://blog.readingthinkingandwriting.com/?p=411>) and I have
turned my focus to Dr. Rider's work at MIT to end viral infections of all
types.

<http://blog.readingthinkingandwriting.com/?p=500>

The expectations of Dr. Rider with regard to targets of DRACO include HIV, and
I would ask that anyone who reads my article pays close attention. I have
attempted to relay the science behind the reason I have concluded that Dr.
Rider's work will be historic. And I hope I have done just that, though I
apologize for where I've failed.

Tissue penetration is addressed by the mouse models... and, from the way our
immune system operates. Where an infection resides, molecules are spread that
increase vascular permeability and constrict draining vessles thus
concentrating blood volume. This is essentially how any medicine acts with
specifitcity to the location of infection and what assures DRACO will hit
target cells.

Further research in Dr. Rider's lab has shown that not only does DRACO
succesfully induce the destruction of infected cells, but that it also reduces
the viral titres (quantity of the virus).

I'm happy to answer any further questions.

------
ForHumanity
Thanks to everyone again, especially Exabrial for posting my article here. If
anyone has any questions, please post them and I will address them or ask Dr.
Rider for a response.

I was hoping someone might be able to point me to another site where I could
post my article that would result in as many eyes coming for a look.

As to Tokenadult's comment... the article isn't a plea for funding, it is an
attempt to get DRACO into the public's mind. However, myself and a few others
have come together to search for a way to fund Dr. Rider's work. So, this
post, is a plea for funding. We will have a site up soon as we have found a
way to fund his research. We have no desire for financial reward for
ourselves, we simply want the full potential of his work explored... rapidly.

------
exabrial
I found this research to be incredibly interesting and hacker-like! He
essentially didn't try to re-invent the wheel, or break ground with genetic
design... Instead, he took well-understood pieces of biology and created a
mashup previously unthought of!

And yes, viruses are important for evolution! But having a cure for Colds,
flus, and various STDs, that kill thousands would be an amazing achievement.
I'm hoping we see this sort of therapy come to market in our lifetime

------
sukuriant
Viruses are weird. I want cures to these diseases as much as the next person;
but a "broad anti-viral"? What about the good viruses?

~~~
podperson
Read TFA which addresses this point in several respects.

From my skimming of the article:

1\. Viruses are believed to have had a beneficial effect (or an effect of some
kind) on human evolution.

2\. Viruses are mainly bacteriophages and it's possible that "good" viruses
keep some bacterial populations in check, but no studies have thus far found
this in human beings, although it appears to be true of seawater.

3\. The antiviral in question is broken up by the body in a few days, so any
increase in bacterial populations that might result from the antiviral would
probably be short-lived.

~~~
sukuriant
Agreed. So, it will be interesting to see if the generic anti-viral negatively
effects us as a species; and what we'll do about it.

------
kunai
Quick! Everyone create startups to fund DRACO!

In all seriousness, however, this looks very promising and if true, is perhaps
the most influential and important discovery in decades.

------
kimura
A good start would be to put this on kickstarter.

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SCAQTony
Reversed out type is so hard to read. If you are going to insist on a black
background please use green type.

