jfarlow

46 ms·

151.
by jfarlow 9y ago
If you are directing the immune system against cells that the body perceives as 'self', then simply boosting the system to the point it attacks a cancer will likely be detrimental the patient. Cancers and other similar diseases ar
152.
by jfarlow 9y ago
The software 'compiles' down to DNA - which can be produced and delivered in any form useful to clients. Most of the time that deliverable is a plasmid. The plasmid DNA is then used as a reagent to manufacture the physical retrovi
153.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Yep. Novartis' new CAR was recommended for approval last week. ~100 are in the FDA pipeline, and now that the first was unanimously approved, expect a lot more. Paywalled, but a good review of the 100 in trials right now: https:&#x2F
154.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Here is a figure that illustrates the process for the CARs in the article (which is slightly different than OPs, but similar in result): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480367/figure/... Es
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by jfarlow 9y ago
Penicillin :: invading diseases (bacterial/viral/fungal) CARs (& protein biotherapetuics) :: human diseases (misregulation/cancer)
156.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Chimeric Antigen Receptors are an impressive first step into designed biological technologies. There are new challenges associated with their design and deployment - but there are also a lot of theoretical capabilities that are unmatched n
157.
by jfarlow 9y ago
In this particular case the therapy is being applied to cells that have been extracted from a patient. That allows a reasonable error rate where errors can be filtered out, and success verified before the cells are reimplanted. This is a s
158.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Vaccines work by previewing a foreign object, that if seen again, the immune system will attack. The big difference in treating cancer is that there is nothing 'foreign' about cancer - it arises from one's own cells. Cancer i
159.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Proteins are the machines produced to atomic specification by a genetic blueprint encoded in DNA. The are the tools life uses to accomplish most of its tasks. Proteins are formed like 'beads on a string' - a chemical single-dime
160.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Prions are 'misfolded' proteins [1] that, in their misfolded form actually cause other proteins to also misfold - a physical viral cascade. A really crazy concept not too dissimilar from a kind of biological 'grey goo'
161.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Not at the moment. We do love open source and have an interest in seeing what we can make open. But currently we simply don't have the resources to do so. There is the Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) that is being developed to
162.
by jfarlow 9y ago
The other 'cool' part about CARs is that 'without much modification' is not near so large a challenge as it is for small molecules. Certainly there are regulatory barriers, but scientifically, the ease with which you co
163.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Which are risks similar in nature to the risk of getting cancer after one has been infected with any other virus that integrates into one's genome.
164.
by jfarlow 9y ago
If you're trying to compute from first principles (atom by atom), yes, exactly - that's a very hard problem. And if you're rearranging entire protein domains rather than point mutations - that's an intractable problem.
165.
by jfarlow 9y ago
The software is useful because it allows you to have some idea of the function of each component prior to their assembly. Further, at this point, the software is designed for R&D far far upstream of being put directly used as a therape
166.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Congratulations! The Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) deployed here is very much unlike the standard 'small molecule' drug that 'disrupts a bad thing', and much more like a rationally engineered tool using the body's
167.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Yep - that's on it's way ;-) At this point, having such a 'check engine light', or, for instance, having a cluster of 10 cells under your wrist that change color (which is subsequently sensed by your iWatch) is just a
168.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Tiny robots already exist - they're called proteins (of which Cas9 is one). We're just now starting to be able to program these proteins de novo. Reading DNA - well, DNA is inside a nucleus inside a cell. That's tricky to g
169.
by jfarlow 9y ago
For those of us in industries at the fringes (but still of interest) to HN, want to have an 'Other' category? :-) We make scientific/genetic software - and I'm not sure where we might have fit in your sidebar. Getting to
170.
by jfarlow 9y ago
They actually get smaller yet - cellular warfare even. Entire protein collections (R-Bodies) that are like explosive coiled springs [1] that can be made to be pH-sensitive so that when they're 'eaten' by a cell, they explode
171.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Interesting approach to getting at some dark spaces in our current understanding. What kind of computation time does it take to run against a single amnio acid chain? Can you get much (nice disorder predictions?) out of an amino acid seque
172.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Sure - those are good ideas, and they do (did) such searches prior to determining which sequence to look for in the genome. Just a few caveats off the top of my head though: - When you are sequencing a genome how do you know whether or not
173.
by jfarlow 9y ago
If you calculate information density, it turns out that 20-base pairs is VERY unique. The human genome is ~3 billion base pairs. Each base pair is one of four different bases. So 15 base pairs at 4^15 carries 1 billion bits of informatio
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by jfarlow 9y ago
This recent note in an "obscure but high-profile journal" (what?!) is entirely a technical observation. I fear that the CRISPR phenomenon has a lot of people, even scientists, who know just enough about the topic to want to affect
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by jfarlow 9y ago
You still have to figure out what "intelligence" is, and how to transfer, manipulate, or otherwise encode for it. I don't think we have the tools to actually transplant intelligence yet. We are in the early stages of underst
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by jfarlow 9y ago
DNA needs to be compiled into a protein in order to 'do' anything. DNA is the source code, proteins are the molecular machines built by the code. And every organism uses a similar compiler. So the DNA has to be put inside an org
177.
by jfarlow 9y ago
Interesting... I will need to figure that out. I've not seen that before. The HTML for the page is just a formatted response from our API server formatted by Go's internal templating engine. The back button seems to request someth
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by jfarlow 9y ago
We have built the infrastructure to design out entire plasmids - within Pinecone you can build 'non-coding Cassettes' that include all sorts of expression components. You can build designs that include all the standard DNA express
179.
by jfarlow 9y ago
As it's a 'ShowHN' - we've only had the software public for a short time. Biology takes a while, so many of our clients who have used the software have chosen to not yet make their designs public - they're still wo
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by jfarlow 9y ago
I don't think so. But we are certainly trying to lower the barrier to entry for building useful biological tools. We hope to help 'smaller than billion-dollar-blockbuster drugs' be built by companies and researchers who are

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