[Link] YCombinator-Backed Non-Profit Startup Attempting HIV/AIDS Vaccine
The short story is that animal trials of a vaccine have been completed and they’re looking for funding to go further.
https://pledge.immunityproject.org/the-free-hiv-aids-vaccine
Discussion on Hacker News here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7108684
A few personal notes:
My first thought on seeing this was “I want to donate, but only if it’s actually going to pan out. Otherwise it’ll be a waste of my money.” But that’s exactly the wrong way to think about science. You fund it because it has a worthwhile probability of success. Even if the attempt fails, I can still believe that I’ve made a “correct” decision.
I’ve basically outsourced my vetting of the worthiness of the endeavor to Paul Graham, Sam Altman, and the rest of the YCombinator team. They have the time and the resources to examine and consider this more thoroughly than I could possibly do.
Another reason that I donated to this was to encourage the general idea of crowdfunded science.
From hacker news:
I know little to nothing about these “microspheres”, but a quick search shows that this approach has been considered for over 15 years. It’s not clear if there are any widely used vaccines based on biodegradable microspheres, though there is definitely some research going on. If not, I would think that this particular one succeeding first is somewhat unlikely.
Maybe a subject matter expert can chime in.
Have they released the specifics of these discoveries? I couldn’t find them anywhere on their web site. Given their professed goals, it’s hard to see a legitimate reason not to do this.
While I obviously like the idea of a free HIV vaccine, I’m sceptical that a small startup, however well run, can do better than the entire might of the pharmaceutical industry.
I don’t know enough about the subject matter to be sure, but I would predict there are good reasons why this technique hasn’t been focused on. It would require an implausibly massive level of groupthink for pharma companies and other charities to have overlooked a potential solution for such a prominent (and potentially profitable) disease.
If you have 10000 possible solutions and can only test 1000 than you have to make choices about not persuing some avenues.
But I would be surprised if there not also big pharma research looking at AIDS vaccines. In this case the people behind the immunity project seem to have made a patentable finding in 2010. Then they run a successful animal study. They chose to to the innovative road of being a kickstarter charity and seeking tech money from Microsoft and Y-Combinator.
At this stage some Big Pharma company would probably also buy them and do the trial if they wanted to pursue that road.