
Founder-driven life sciences companies - elkingtowa
https://axial.substack.com/p/axial-founder-driven-life-sciences
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t_serpico
This is one key comment that fundamentally differentiates software/hardware
from biotech: "Overall the power of recombinant technology and its rapid
growth in the 1970s/1990s didn’t necessarily translate into success for new
technologies." Powerful abstractions and pervasive feedback loops across the
hardware and software stack is what fundamentally enabled rapid innovation in
tech; those same ideas haven't developed even close to the same degree in the
biotech space.

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est31
One of the reasons why biotech has so low success is that we see it as kinda
ok to unleash a half tested app onto people, basically most startup apps out
there, while new drugs are extremely hard to get tested.

It's kinda understandable given that some drugs can have serious negative long
term effects on people, whereas a buggy CRUD app can't really do much harm in
comparison.

While the costs of a "buggy" drug are usually larger than the cost of a buggy
app, the benefits of a "good" drug are usually larger than the benefit of yet
another app to share pictures, or a uber but for X.

Just see how much it costs to save the economy just from the corona measures.
The opposite of that is the benefit of a 1 year increase of people's healthy
life spans, much more in fact as only parts of the economy were shut down.

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neilv
I think "move fast, and break things" isn't as catchy, when it's harder to
ignore that "things" being broken are often people.

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jamestimmins
Yeah "move fast and kill people" doesn't have the same ring to it

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jl2718
Hi. This is pretty early for this, but I’m looking for some advice for
starting a seed fund to advance early-stage startups in cancer immunotherapy.
It’s not for me, but someone whom I did some machine learning work, and angel
investment with. He’s one of the top names in the field from the early days of
cloning to today, veteran of several biotech startups, and likely recent Nobel
and Lasker winner advising. There’s a lot we don’t know about the financial
side, and I’m trying to figure out whether this is feasible, and what the plan
should be. Thanks!

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bionhoward
Noble goal, and I’d suggest the book Basic Immunology, but I’d also warn you,
cancer might be a famously difficult disease, but the number of treatments is
vast, thus it is difficult to market a new one, because oncologists are
overwhelmed by options. There’s an idea for your ML buddy: just imagine rather
than make new treatments, you could help docs pick existing treatments from
the sea of complex options...

Link to an article on the topic: [https://medium.com/bit-pharma/how-do-you-
deal-with-cancer-3e...](https://medium.com/bit-pharma/how-do-you-deal-with-
cancer-3e3316519c0b)

~~~
jl2718
I personally read Janeway in 2014 when I learned about the problem and started
helping with ML models. But the fund isn't mine; it will be run by the leader
in the field. He's already heavily invested in a nonprofit that provides
physicians and patients with information about leading-edge therapies:
[https://www.ucir.org/](https://www.ucir.org/).

