DRACO: Wonder Drug?

[Ledgewood]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/draco-drug-could-cure-almost-any-virus_n_924435.html

Is there something I am missing, or should people be pretty excited about this?

[pizza delivery]

An article by TIME Magazine's Healthland's section explained that the drug works by using the "natural defense systems" of human cells against the viral infection.

In essence, the drug combines the protein in human cells, which instigate a series of reactions that prevent the virus from multiplying, with a protein that tells the infected cells to "commit suicide," or apoptosis.

heh-heh, cool. those MIT people are good.

[XUglow]

heh-heh, cool. those MIT people are good.

Shouldn't there be a parade or something?

[bobbiemcgee]

Most the right wingers on here will dismiss this article due to the source.:eek:

[Ledgewood]

I figured that, too. But there's lots of outlets... uhh... outletting the story. That was just the first on my www.google.com search.

[kmcrawfo]

If you review the literature on this the current data appears to be primarily obtained from lab cultured cells that were then infected with a virus. A small percentage of the data was done of live mice. This is very different from in-vivo studies of efficacy in humans.

This is a long ways off and could be a flash-in-the-pan that amounts to nothing. It would certainly be one of the greatest medical achievements of all time, but I put more hope into it once it advances quite a bit further down the pipeline.

[Snipe]

I remember reading about this, I think the first news release was in August checking back on the Google. I think it I picked it up off some news aggregator late at night. I remember reading the article to my wife. Then I went to bed and I haven't heard anything else until this thread today.

Supposedly this thing could cure the common cold, ebola, HIV/AIDS and everything in between.

It really is amazing what sort of technology we are bumping up against. People in the future will wonder how we lived in such ignorance and filth. 100 years ago they didn't have anti-biotics. All doctors could do is set a broken bone, give you some opium to ease your pain and pray the infection or what ever you might have contracted didn't kill you.

What a manificent leap forward this would be. Not only that, but all the money we currently spend toward diseases like AIDS could be directed to other interests. And all those brilliant scientists working on viruses could then be free to pursue other maladies.

Life just keeps getting better.

New Wonder Drug Kills Almost Any Virus (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112259-New-Wonder-Drug-Kills-Almost-Any-Virus)

MIT’s New Super drug, ‘DRACO’ a cure for the common cold! (http://yourdaddy.net/2011/08/11/mits-new-super-drug-draco-a-cure-for-the-common-cold/)

New drug could cure nearly any viral infection
Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have developed technology that may someday cure the common cold, influenza and other ailments. (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html)

[Snipe]

I am reading Charles Dickens to my kids right now, and we got off on the subject of old, crippling diseases people had before modern medicine. People used to drop like flies, or lived deformed crippled lives. I think it was Tiny Tim that spurred the discussion.

Smallpox is an interesting case of humanity working together. You can read the wiki on it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox). It emerged in human populations around 10,000 BC, and it stayed with us for 12,000 years. The World Health Organization announced that it was finally eradicated in 1979. It was still killing millions of people every year in the 1960s. It was responsible for an estimated 300-500 million deaths in the Twentieth Century. Those numbers are truly mind boggling.


Having considered the development and results of the global program on smallpox eradication initiated by WHO in 1958 and intensified since 1967 … Declares solemnly that the world and its peoples have won freedom from smallpox, which was a most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest time, leaving death, blindness and disfigurement in its wake and which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa, Asia and South America." ”

—World Health Organization

Even the Soviets and the Americans were on the same page.

It may have been the single greatest event of the last century, as well as one of the greatest events in the entire history of humanity.

[Jumpy]

Sounds great, but all drugs in the PR&D pipeline are hyped in press releases as the next new wonder drug. This drug is many, many years away from being on the market. It has to be funded/bought by a pharmaceutical company and then go through three phases of clinical trials. It could be upwards of 20 years before this thing gets past phase three clinical testing.

Right now, the MIT lab is giving hyperbolic testimony in a glorified sales pitch for the drug to be bought by Merck or Pfizer or another pharmaceutical giant.

EDIT: should have mentioned this initially, but wired magazine has a great article in this month's magazine regarding the pitfalls of pharmaceutical PR&D. They use the story of Pfizer losing years of development and over a billion dollars on a compound that they thought would completely eradicate high cholesterol. It wasn't until they got to phase three trials that they realized that the drug was actually killing people, or increasing the likelihood of death, anyway.

The problem is that we believe that causation can be taken for fact when in reality, causation is an assumption that we use to tie observable facts together. If LDL is bad and HDL lowers LDL, then a drug that increases HDL must be able to eradicate high cholesterol. Only problem is, it didn't. Artificially increasing the amount of HDL in a person's system actually had a detrimental effect.

[Snipe]

That is true Jumpy, but we can still dream. I think the day is coming and that they are working on the right things.

Even if this drug is effective to kill everything, it will still take a long time to bring to market because of government regulations. Imagine how many people will die waiting for the government to approve it.

The money and lives this would save if it works out is something. We are supposed to spend 28.4 billion in 2012 on HIV/AIDS (http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7029-07.pdf).

2012 ~28.4 billion
2011 ~27.1 billion
2010 ~26.2 billion
2009 ~25.3 billion
2008 ~23.4 billion
2007 ~21.2 billion

That is over 150 billion over just 6 years. Also you have lost productivity and taxes. Gay people are a relatively wealthy demographic. The are well educated, tend not to have children (and deductions), they make lots of money, consume a good deal and pay lots of taxes.

It would also be nice to refocus that money and research that has been specifically and politically targeted toward AIDs and refocus it on things that affect a broader demographic of the American people. Imagine what cost savings a cure for diabetes could bring? I saw one estimate that said if you could cure diabetes and all diabetes related health conditions you could decrease medical spending by around 25%. Talk about a medical dividend. We are going to need breakthroughs in technology to pay for all of the healthcare costs of the future. It would be nice to bend that cost curve in the other direction for a change.

[Snipe]

I looked up an old post of mine concerning diabetes and cost savings in an inteview with Dean Kamen.

Inventor Dean Kamen Says Healthcare Debate "Backward Looking" (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/life-extension/4327012)


Kamen: Well, I mean the whole supposition that "We have a crisis in healthcare." Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We're developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people's lives. We're developing pharmaceuticals that alleviate the need for surgery and eliminate the volatile effects of diseases. We're making the surgeries that are necessary ever less invasive. You can get a stent through your femoral artery all the way up into your heart and fix a blockage without surgery. I'd say, if we have a crisis, it's the embarrassment of riches. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that we're no longer in a world where you can simply give everybody all the healthcare that is available.

Each side of this debate has created the boogieman and monsters, like "We don't want let this program to come into existence because that will mean rationing." Well, I hate to tell you the news but as soon as medicine started being able to do incredible things that are very expensive, we started rationing. The reason 100 years ago everyone could afford their healthcare is because healthcare was a doctor giving you some elixir and telling you you'll be fine. And if it was a cold you would be fine. And if it turns out it was consumption; it was tuberculosis; it was lung cancer—you could still sit there. He'd give you some sympathy, and you'd die. Either way, it's pretty cheap.

We now live in a world where technology has triumphed, in many ways, over death. The problem with that is that it's enormously expensive. And big pharmaceutical giants and big medical products companies have stopped working on stuff that could be extraordinary because they know they won't be reimbursed, according to the common standards. We're not only rationing today; we're rationing our future.

It was a memorable interview. He also said this:


Kamen: Every drug that's made is a gift from one generation to the next because, while it may be expensive now, it goes off patent and your kids will have it essentially for free.

Whatever the marketplace, if talented people are given resources they're going to keep driving us to having better, simpler, cheaper solutions to problems. And, by the way, if they come up with a better solution but it can't be cheaper—which, in the beginning, most things aren't—nobody says you have to buy it. If you think this new drug is too expensive, it's not a good deal, we have a crisis, buy the old one. It's a generic now. It's cheap.

...


PM: Yet health-care costs do keep rising. Is there a point at which we simply can't afford the most advanced treatments?

Kamen: Diabetes alone, if you include all of the long-term, insidious consequences of a lifetime of diabetes, is responsible for about 30 percent of the federal reimbursement for healthcare. Taking care of the diabetic every day is a small piece of it. But what if tomorrow we could wipe out diabetes, suddenly everybody takes a pill and it cures the people that have it, and it inoculates the other people so they'll never have it? Forgetting what a great life that would give people and their families, you take care of 30 percent of what now we project as this insurmountable problem of healthcare, which they project is going to kill us.

Well, it would kill us if we look at the 30-year actuarial data based on our 19th century confidence in technology. But I'm sure in 1920 if you asked actuaries to say what percentage of our GDP are we going to spend taking care of people with polio, they'd say: "They get polio, it goes to their lungs, they sit in iron lung machines, they could live a whole lifetime with three people watching over them. We can't support them all."

But what did it cost to deal with everybody with polio? Oh, $2 apiece. We gave them the Salk vaccine. But in the 1920s Salk wasn't around yet.

Interesting stuff. You can read the whole interview at the link.

[Jumpy]

I totally agree with you, Snipe. I'm just urging everyone to temper any excitement they have about any drug, especially one that is still in the very beginning, theoretical stages. Because of the enormous costs associated with developing new drugs, pharmaceutical companies have to overwhelmingly impressed with a new drug to buy it from a research lab and begin the development process. More often than not, most companies spend most of their time and effort into reformulating existing drugs to extend their patent on them. It's way more cost effective than bringing an entirely new drug to market.

That doesn't mean that we should stop researching new compounds for the next new wonder drug, because they do exist. It's just that finding one is like winning the lottery.

[Snipe]

So it sounds like we need to scrap the FDA and all those costly regulations in getting drugs to market. At least that is what I am hearing. I can only hear out of my right ear. I think the FDA kills more people than it saves by preventing drugs from coming to market and making them more expensive when they get there. At some point it may not be a bad idea to scrap the whole system and start over.

[Jumpy]

That's one idea. Or just let us test on illegal immigrants without going through all the rigmarole of government regulated testing. Kill two birds with one stone.















Just kidding.

[kmcrawfo]

So it sounds like we need to scrap the FDA and all those costly regulations in getting drugs to market. At least that is what I am hearing. I can only hear out of my right ear. I think the FDA kills more people than it saves by preventing drugs from coming to market and making them more expensive when they get there. At some point it may not be a bad idea to scrap the whole system and start over.

All in all the FDA does a fairly good job with drug approvals. Even with our strict process drugs still slip through that kill people. Do a quick search on Raptiva and others that have been pulled after FDA approval. We need to err' towards patient safety and really never know how safe a drug is until the mass populous takes it. The FDA does the best it can with limited numbers in realitvely small drug trials that may not be powered enough to weed out all adverse outcomes.

It really takes 5-10 years for a new drug on the market to the mass populous to get a true grip on what it "really" does. That is why everyone should be a little wary of the "new" drugs and talk in detail with you doc about them.

Don't get up too much hope on this anti-viral thing. It is many, many years away. Hopefully, it will turn out something good but we really have no idea what it will do in the human body or how the delivery system/dosages/etc would be developed. A lot of work still to do before trials could even be started. Then trials take many years...etc

[Snipe]

Jumpy you are my kind of people. I wouldn't discriminate against illegal immigrants though, I would test it on all immigrants. Your green card won't save you now Jose! That would be doing the jobs Americans won't do for sure.

[Snipe]

Craw, I am not sure that if you add all the deaths the FDA has racked up by denying people access and put it against all the deaths that they have saved through safety measures you would have a net benefit. I don't look at it in a Right vs Wrong way but in a pro vs. con. In our current system we make drugs very costly and out of reach for many people. People suffer because of that. We delay drugs that could have saved lives. People suffer and die because of that. Some drugs will never get produced because of the red tape and expense of bringing a drug to market. We all suffer and the future of humanity suffers because of that.

Now this would be impossible to measure. We don't know for instance what drugs could have been developed with a free market. But our current system does have pros and cons and I for one would be all for abolishing most of it in favor of freedom.

Free the People.

[SixFig]

Diabetes? So you'd rather help fat people than homosexuals?

[Snipe]

If this new wonder drug works then AIDS will be a thing of the past. I used AIDS funding as an example because it is a huge flow that can be re-directed. I think getting rid of AIDS would be fantastic. I had a neighbor growing up that died and I think it was AIDS. They don't always broadcast that stuff. He was a good man, a friend of the family and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I would love to say goodbye to AIDS for good.

Think of all the over-the-counter cold remedies. Think about how much is spent on that stuff. Think of all the space devoted just to selling it and money to market it all. If this breakthrough turns out to be real it would be revolutionary.

Again people have advised caution about the press releases, but it is fun to dream.

[xnatic03]

I appreciate all the insight put into this thread.
I would love to see AIDS gone. I would also love to see cancer gone as it has had an enormous effect on my family (and on my friends as well). I would also like to figure out exactly what causes autism. Luckily for my wife and I, our daughter got early intervention, and with a TON of therapy, work, and understanding, she is to the point where she will be as close to a normal child as you can get. However, after being in many classes/seminars and going to the Walk for Autism and seeing how many people are affected by this, I just wish there could be some answers or a cure for this.

[Fred Garvin 2.0]

So it sounds like we need to scrap the FDA and all those costly regulations in getting drugs to market. At least that is what I am hearing. I can only hear out of my right ear. I think the FDA kills more people than it saves by preventing drugs from coming to market and making them more expensive when they get there. At some point it may not be a bad idea to scrap the whole system and start over.

Recycling more Friedman and Walter williams. Yawn.

[Snipe]

I heard that I can now follow Fred Garvin on twitter.

[nuts4xu]

I wish they had a miracle drug that eradicated my beer belly. That would be awesome.

I also wish they could produce a pill for stupid people. We have come a long way as a society, and have made huge strides in technology and intelligence.

However, every friggin day I walk out the front door and interact with people, I find someone dumber than I met the day before. Just when I think I am not all that smart, I meet someone that is so dumb, it makes me feel better about myself.

More and more dumb people are born everyday and are often the cause of major problems in this world. I wish we could identify idiots when they come out of the womb and snuff them out before they can spread their stupidity.

[Snipe]

They have already genetically engineered smarter mice. They did that way back in 1999. You can bet your ass that they are working on something for humans in the pipeline. How that will work out is anyone's guess. I would suspect something like baseball and steroids. Once people gain an advantage doing it everyone would feel pressure to do it.

[Fred Garvin 2.0]

They have already genetically engineered smarter mice. They did that way back in 1999. You can bet your ass that they are working on something for humans in the pipeline. How that will work out is anyone's guess. I would suspect something like baseball and steroids. Once people gain an advantage doing it everyone would feel pressure to do it.

They said the same thing with anti-depressants. In "Listening to Prozac" Peter Kramer compared them to steroids and envisioned entire sales staffs on it.

Of course SSRI's do have that limp dick thing...and they certainly behave differently on teens.

[Snipe]

Universal Flu Vaccine Could Be Available by 2013 (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/01/13/universal-flu-vaccine-could-be-available-by-2013)


Annual flu shots might soon become a thing of the past, and threats such as avian and swine flu might disappear with them as a vaccine touted as the "holy grail" of flu treatment could be ready for human trials next year.

That's earlier than the National Institutes of Health estimated in 2010, when they said a universal vaccine could be five years off. By targeting the parts of the virus that rarely mutate, researchers believe they can develop a vaccine similar to the mumps or measles shot—people will be vaccinated as children and then receive boosters later.

I was kind of hoping that we would have a massive flu that would wipe out the underlings and undesirables of the third world before we found the cure. Looks like technology has it's + and -s. Think of how one good flu could have solved our whole social security / medicare problem. You want to really bend the cost curve? That would do it.

Looks like we will miss that too. At some point we are going to have to go to war against old people because they cost too much money.

[pickledpigsfeet]

They have already genetically engineered smarter mice. They did that way back in 1999. You can bet your ass that they are working on something for humans in the pipeline. How that will work out is anyone's guess. I would suspect something like baseball and steroids. Once people gain an advantage doing it everyone would feel pressure to do it.

Have you seen the movie "Limitless"? Kind of this same idea. Not a fantastic movie but good enough and certainly entertaining.