Hacker News: vibrio

New comment by vibrio in "Clinical failure rates over the decades: yikes"

vibrio — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:03:33 +0000

To add a somewhat cynical view, a significant part of the original motivation for the ranibizumab (Lucentis) development was due to pricing arbitrage across diseases. bevicizumab was priced based on uses in cancer indications with a “large” volume (many mls) used for systemic infusion. The same product injected into the eye, in say a 1:1000 volume, could be efficacious for AMD, but pricing per volume would be trivial amount at the bevi cost per volume. So they tweaked the active ingredient to a new product (exact same mechanism ) and raised the price per volume to a market standard cost per treatment. There may be some pk-type benefits to the derivative , but the pricing context is an industry case study.

New comment by vibrio in "Couple pay >$800k for a gene-editing therapy for their daughter. She died."

vibrio — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:55:01 +0000

I agree with you that AAV is clearly a useful tool but at times the low levels of self discipline and scientific rigor that the field has applied to dosing is disappointing at best and scary at times. This includes use of other vector types such as by bluebirdbio and even the Jesse Gelsinger tragedy. “If a little is good then more is better” is a crazy and lazy way to apply and optimize these technologies.

New comment by vibrio in "How to sequence your own DNA at home"

vibrio — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 01:38:02 +0000

I suspect there is a deep sequencing service that is non CLIA and cheap. True. they may not be trustworthy with the data. That said, there are steps here where the data is put into Claude. Do we trust that ?

New comment by vibrio in "What a 98-Year Old Children's Book Teaches Us About AI"

vibrio — Sat, 30 May 2026 10:57:57 +0000

Maybe also an interesting case study in the inconsistent application of copyright law.

New comment by vibrio in "Danish Pension Blacklists SpaceX over 'Catastrophic Governance'"

vibrio — Sat, 30 May 2026 10:43:56 +0000

I think their point is not the ESG component, but firms with traditionally irrational valuations (à la GameStop) for which index inclusion exceptions have been made to facilitate short term liquidity for IPO participants. Seems as though one should be able to hold the broad market less that component.

New comment by vibrio in "Nearly 50 Years Later, WKRP in Cincinnati Becomes a Real Radio Station"

vibrio — Sat, 16 May 2026 10:51:13 +0000

I can’t wait until Thanksgiving.

New comment by vibrio in "$500M for Virtual Biology Initiative, Funded by Zuckerbergs"

vibrio — Fri, 01 May 2026 07:30:24 +0000

Just in that it’s not gonna work.

New comment by vibrio in "Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email"

vibrio — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 01:29:43 +0000

…Better plan all day Better plan all week, better plan all month, better plan all year…. (Sorry, esoteric song lyric that applies.)

New comment by vibrio in "US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters"

vibrio — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:11:08 +0000

Interesting analogy.

New comment by vibrio in "US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters"

vibrio — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:10:45 +0000

This is interesting. As a naive user I’ve gotten the gut feeling of commoditization among the models. I assumed the data center capacity push is intended to be the differentiator but that still seems utility-like over time. (and the data centers in space concept seems like good PR and IR, but to me, technically… ambitious)

New comment by vibrio in "US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters"

vibrio — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:13:00 +0000

(not intending ot be snarky, but this isn't my area of knowledge in the least.) Didn't the AI organizations 'get it both ways' when they trained on vast collection of works under copyright and then purely "own' the outcome?

New comment by vibrio in "Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge"

vibrio — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:00:24 +0000

You've succinctly identified and communicated a real problem. In your opinion, what is the best approach, if any, to attempt to address it?

New comment by vibrio in "Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models"

vibrio — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:26:28 +0000

Put this way, this seems reasonable. Beyond cell therapy, I don't thin the cost of drug is the motivation for not making it more freely available. 'Misuse' leading to potential liability or unjustified bad outcomes, along with some regulatory burden seems like the issue.

New comment by vibrio in "Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models"

vibrio — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:51:24 +0000

So charging patients/insurance companies at cost to fund the clinical studies?

New comment by vibrio in "Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models"

vibrio — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:54:45 +0000

Not even cost plus? Not sure how that works, from the viewpoint of economic incentives.

New comment by vibrio in "Drug trio found to block tumour resistance in pancreatic cancer in mouse models"

vibrio — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:50:42 +0000

Knowing whether drugs work isn’t trivial. Patients are typically very heterogeneous in their responses to drugs. For example, pembrolizumab (the most successful cancer drug ever) typically only works in, say 30% of patients depending of the cancer type. Just throwing therapeutic ideas out there and letting physicians sort out how to use them and in which patients, isn’t a panacea. Looking at clinical data can be like star gazing even in planned studies. Structured, statistically powered studies, and costly rigorous assays on biomarkers and correlative studies are essential for understanding how and in what patients drugs are working. I’m all for expanding access to drugs, and there is abundant waste and greed in big Pharma and venture, but there are also people doing hard expensive science, medicine and manufacturing. Im not sure I have the answer. A “yelp for medicine” won’t improve immediate outcomes, nor longer term understanding and progress. A great and excruciating read about the tension there is a real-time blog (the story’s story) that was written by Jake Seliger unt he passed in 2023.

New comment by vibrio in "Use of Bayesian methodology in clinical trials of drug and biological products [pdf]"

vibrio — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:31:48 +0000

Cane you provide a list of the “stupid” drug approvals?

New comment by vibrio in "The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones"

vibrio — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:38:48 +0000

lol. The battery life seems so short, I was starting to wonder whether this was the case...

New comment by vibrio in "Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics"

vibrio — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 02:36:41 +0000

Slightly different point but many bacteria in us right now also make lipopolysaccharide (LPS). If it were purified and injected iv, the LPS in me could probably kill me 1000 x over.

New comment by vibrio in "Not for human consumption"

vibrio — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 12:42:20 +0000

I agreee with the caution. I am not endocrinologist enough to guess what may happen and when. Because of the level of variably in all that is being experimented with, my guess is there may be a slower burn rather than explosion of odd toxicities. It does feel like stuff will happen.