Words about science and hiking
I admit to doing a spit-take when I saw the title of this article: Aptamers as Therapeutic Agents: Has the Initial Euphoria Subsided?. At this stage in the game, with only one aptamer therapeutic cleared and it having perennially weak sales, that question mark in the title seems more than a bit out of date. Read More …
I’ve made this argument before (see here and here and here) and so it is gratifying (as always) to see someone else make the same argument albeit with a different emphasis. A SciAm blog post by Kevin Mitchell (Is Our Future Really Written in Our Genes?) attacks the fallacy of genetic determinism by pointing out Read More …
RNA therapeutics have been around for a long time. Stanley Crooke founded Isis Pharmaceuticals (diplomatically renamed Ionis in 2015) in the late 1980s. They got an approval for treating CMV infections in AIDS patients in 1998 (a commercial flop)…and didn’t get a second approval until 2013. I don’t know the investment history of Isis, but Read More …
NB – this question was first posted on Quora in 2010 The fact that this question is as relevant in 2019 as it was in 2010 tells us something, does it not? I think we can throw out the “we just need more time” plea. Francis Collins, leader of the human genome initiative and now Read More …
I’m always gratified to see my prejudices confirmed by people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than me. So a devastating critique of genomics and personalized medicine is the intellectual equivalent of having your dog stare soulfully into your eyes (while you are holding a treat). It’s just irresistible. The paper in question, by Michael Read More …
Liquid biopsy is all the rage now for cancer screening. But screening – testing apparently healthy people for a disease – is the Great White Whale of cancer diagnostics. I predict it will lose more venture capitalists more money over the next decade than every other Dx play combined. But that’s OK—redistributing money from wealthy Read More …
I’m always glad whenever I see a microbiology theme breach the moat of the NYT and make it on to their opinion page. But I usually end up disappointed once I actually read it. That’s the case with this call to biobank the world’s human gut microbiome. It’s far from the worst idea published this Read More …
Disclosure up front: I helped found SomaLogic and was its first R&D director. I left the company in 2004, but exercised my options and still hold its stock. I am definitely not neutral about the value of proteomics as a diagnostic and prognostic platform. Last Sunday’s NYT magazine had a pretty good article about the Read More …
In science – especially biology – what you find is often no more important than where you look. The oncogene paradigm of cancer genesis – that mutations to key genes cause cells to become cancerous – has reigned supreme for several decades now. It is a driving factor in the whole notion of personalized medicine, Read More …
Another paper about another phage protein isn’t usually cause for notice. There are lots of phage, and they have lots of proteins, and figuring out what they all do could occupy the efforts of scientists for several millennia. Which is precisely my point. What’s sometimes lost in all the excitement about genomics is that it Read More …