4 ms·

Kite's $12b acquisition by Gilead [1] on Monday may be a harbinger of anticipated success of these kinds of biotherapeutics. Given the modularity of these CAR

Kite's $12b acquisition by Gilead [1] on Monday may be a harbinger of anticipated success of these kinds of biotherapeutics. Given the modularity of these CAR systems, I'd expect to see a cascade of more approvals as the therapeutic scaffold is perfected. It's not just giant pharma working on these systems either. Younger companies like Cell Design Labs, Chimera bio, Nkarta are taking very novel approaches to further refining the specificity and precision of these kinds of treatments. The cool thing about the CAR system is that it's amenable to rational engineering from modular, biological components. The CAR approved here was the product of low-throughput painstaking labor, but many companies are trying to boost the rate of R&D. We're building digital infrastructure to facilitate the rational design of these kinds of biotherapeutics in hopes of speeding up the R&D cycle through an intelligent high-throughput development. You can dig into the structure of the approved CAR therapy here: https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/car19/ https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/car19/ [1] https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kite-pharma-m-a-gilead-sciences-idUKKCN1B810Y https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-kite-pharma-m-a-gilead-sci...

perseusprime11 9y ago
I just hope these kinds of innovations become accessible to people while not replicating the big pharma greed of high prices that dominated the better part of this century leaving people I'm a developed nation like ours rely on animal antibiotics.
- jfarlow 9y ago
  These kinds of genetically designed therapies will require some major retooling of infrastructure, capital, regulation, etc., but are fundamentally cheap and curative - for mis/dis-regulation of the body's own systems. Ultimately, the material to be delivered is extraordinarily cheap to produce. There is a LOT of capital that must be recouped to get these innovations up and running, but in time they should dramatically drop in price and accessibility.

perseusprime11 9y ago

I just hope these kinds of innovations become accessible to people while not replicating the big pharma greed of high prices that dominated the better part of this century leaving people I'm a developed nation like ours rely on animal antibiotics.

jfarlow 9y ago
These kinds of genetically designed therapies will require some major retooling of infrastructure, capital, regulation, etc., but are fundamentally cheap and curative - for mis/dis-regulation of the body's own systems. Ultimately, the material to be delivered is extraordinarily cheap to produce. There is a LOT of capital that must be recouped to get these innovations up and running, but in time they should dramatically drop in price and accessibility.