Absolutely, and if you recall, even YC tried to get in on this idea.

Except they did the same mistake anyone who comes up with this disruption plan commits (including Google with Calico, or Zuck with CZI) - they recruit existing academics to do the disruption. Unfortunately this just fails miserably because they’re culturally corrupted to think of standard dogmas (like there can never be a single cure for cancer). I remember a time when other such dogmas existed (remember how it was considered impossible to de-differentiate somatic cells?).

The other mistake tech bros make in biology is they think they can make any cool idea work if they are smart enough. Because this is actually true in tech. But biology is restricted by laws of nature. If a drug doesn’t work, it can’t be made to work. There’s no room for wishful thinking.

Third mistake I see often is individual bias towards fields that they come from. Someone who has an RNA background will only try to use RNA to solve everything, likewise with antibodies, or imaging, etc. The current research funding system incentivizes such thinking and it becomes entrenched in anyone already in this field. There’s never a thought of “which is the exact technology and approach I should use to solve this problem independent of what I’m an expert at?” So a lot of projects are doomed from the start.

As long as you’re cognizant of these three facts, I think it’s very possible to disrupt this field.

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nradov 7 months ago | parent [-]

Is there any plausible biological reason to think that there could ever be a single cure for cancer?

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ckemere 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps immune-based therapies like CAR-T are based on the premise that there are many cancerous cells in your body all the time, but your immune system deals with them, and it’s only when it fails to do so that you end up in the pathological state. So the “single cure” is the normally-functioning immune system?

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nradov 7 months ago | parent [-]

That might be part of it. And yet sometimes people with normally-functioning immune systems also get cancer. So while that might be an effective treatment for some patients it's not going to be a universal cure.

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inglor_cz 7 months ago | parent [-]

Human "normal" may not be enough.

Bat "normal" might be. Of course, now we are crossing the threshold from medicine to bio-augmentation.

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nradov 7 months ago | parent [-]

There is no free lunch in biology. Augmenting the immune system to better attack cancer is going to cause other problems. It's so naive to think there is some simple solution that will improve on a billion years of evolution. I mean it's not impossible but realistically what are the odds?

There won't be any magic for cancer. It's just going to be slow grind to solve one hard problem after another.

	▲	inglor_cz 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		There is no free lunch outside biology either. The problems that come with stronger immune systems may be more tractable or at least less unpleasant than cancer. Also, you seem to be very pessimistic. Many interventions in the history of medicine, like washing hands or the first vaccine against smallpox, were almost "magical" in their efficiency: they addressed a lot of problems through a relatively trivial intervention. It is likely that a lot of this low-hanging fruit has been picked up, but you insinuate that there isn't any low-hanging fruit to begin with, only an endless slog of attacking hard problems. That is way too negative.

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inglor_cz 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Some mammal species like bats, whales and naked mole rats seem to be extremely unlikely to get cancer. Which may be an indication that a very efficient immune system can keep cancer in check indefinitely.