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

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.