We have gotten some really good responses to science questions from platform.futurehouse.org already. Both from "Crow" (short answers) and "Falcon" (deep research).
It looks like this is state of the art right now!
"A challenge...is how one can identify molecules with function, that is, ones that have some useful role..." My experience with antibody discovery tells me there might exist a way to compute the finite possibilities and find the best drugs (BIC).
Superagonist targeting cytokine receptors is more precise than targeting cytokines themselves. We have done some fabulous work targeting IL-18 receptors with a bispecific approach and it's promising.
Half-way through the book and I'm already looking for the next one from the recommended list.
The US paperback of How Life Works is now out. Buy it now, before books mentioning evolution are banned!
(Sorry for the gallows humour - I know that is not even beyond the realms of possibility.)
DeepSeek~
It beats chatGPT in Chinese-based scenario and STEMs. Now let’s try drug discovery test.
Consideration session catches three main issues when optimizing affinity of an antibody: trade-off, expression, immunogenicity. Wonderful.
With the most advanced technology and efficient logistics, it’s easy to reduce the price by 50% or more. But you are right most likely the capital will benefit the most, not the patients.
I raised the question cause at one point when my kid needed the biologics, the middle-class me and wife had to think hard how to balance the bill at the thousand dollars level. This is insane~
IP protection, insurance barriers and regulation hurdles are only part of the problems; manufacture efficiency needs improve as well. I'm a strong believer of technologies that there are ways to cut the manufacture/marketing cost by 90%.
In many countries including US and China, quality and affordable drugs are largely a dream; this is especially true for biologics. Instead of focusing on innovative, newer, but more expensive drugs, can we improve the manufacture process to make current drugs more affordable?
I'm the third type, "can I repost it?"😀
I use dream as an indicator of sleep quality. Sleep like a baby, all you have are 'sweet dreams' whose ingredient is pure love. Sleep like an adult, however, all you have are 'bitter dreams' that are end products of anger, fear, sadness, despair, etc.
One thing I agree without reservation is not to put too much hope for future. Any actionable items should be done NOW instead of TOMORROW. But before that you need to decide which items on the list matter.
An utopian read from Mark Cuban
The modern healthcare system brainwashes people too much that all lives are worth living longer at any cost. So wrong.
Not everybody has to live and die according to industrial/healthcare procedure. Some choose to live no matter how, others die naturally and humanely.
We asked a collection of chemical biologists, “What do you think are the most exciting frontiers or the most needed developments in your main field of research?”
You can read that they said in our Feature “Thoughts for the future” – Free to read in January. rdcu.be/d5Ksw
Bless LA~🙏🙏🙏
The AI things are killing social media one by one.
J. Doyne Farmer talked about a conscious civilization to address climate change, economy and more. Inspiring~
Last year I especially appreciated @casssunstein.bsky.social book about contingency of success and Nate Silver book about luck and skill - discussed both here: timmermanreport.com/2024/08/two-...
Between birth and death, aging is a developmental process more towards the latter. It doesn't make much sense psychologically if we define this process starts from beginning. Diseases on the other hand are just exceptions, just the chance is high that most people don't make it to the natural death.
Modern society takes time as a commodity and monetize it. Yes or No: for many professions there is positive association between time and productivity, but once time becomes the target to optimize, it ceases to work properly (Goodhart's law). A good book to read, Four Thousand Weeks.
Fun read: How do the cells die in different ways?
The cells need to orchestrate all genes to survive, but do combinations and permutations of certain pathways to face challenges and then die gloriously (or miserably).
From this exquisite analysis I learned that for now, and just like old days, it’s still hard to predict the true value of Kd which is the #1 parameter for a binder. But the blurry binary cutoff of ‘no-hope’ vs. ‘some-hope’ still helps to fish out the best with the help of wet experiments.
Biologists try to preserve the nature but tech guys want to evolve it. By stealing tech's dirty money, the hybrid sector, biotech, does whatever they can to console the biologists. Unfortunately the tech outpaces the biotech and biology.
Science and the process of doing it are neutral and soulless. The outcome of science, when juxtaposed with end products of non-science human endeavors, will have to face the judgement of ideology or morality. I don't see the point of labelling everything about science political or ideological.
Honest. Decent. Principled. A Lifetime of Selfless Service.
#ThankYouJimmyCarter 🙏
Old-school biologists were trained to pay attention to the details, like the actual voltage demonstrated here. Now that the transformation efficiency is so high that barely nobody actually cares about what happens when you have higher salt concentration as long as you got colonies.
A man of character.
