We Need New Cures Improving our habits and behavior is undoubtedly a massive opportunity to proactively improve human health, for pennies on the dollar. At the same time, it's not a silver bullet. Many diseases aren't preventable with a change in behavior, and for those that are, we are still far away from "solving" the behavior change problem. It's hard. Some people might respond really well to notifications from their Fitbit to get out and walk. Others might be unable to find time to exercise between working two jobs and raising kids. We need to improve both behavior and biology; this post is about the latter.
Good post! I agree with the sentiment for the most part but I think a little context is missing for “virtually every bio active compound has been screened against every drug target.” Our understanding of basic biology is rittled with garbage science that has kind of just stuck through with legacy; and enacted by the people in charge who got their phds before NGS existed. There are lots of drug targets we don’t know about, and lots of opportunity for more finely tuned tweaking of biology with gene therapies, cell therapies, advanced bio molecules etc.
Thanks Olek! Agreed on all fronts, there are big opportunities in exploring the vast space of possible bioactive compounds, and so much that can be done in identifying new targets or approaches. Great fodder for a future post. I might run a draft by you to make sure I'm not missing anything important!
Drugs: Why and How
Good post! I agree with the sentiment for the most part but I think a little context is missing for “virtually every bio active compound has been screened against every drug target.” Our understanding of basic biology is rittled with garbage science that has kind of just stuck through with legacy; and enacted by the people in charge who got their phds before NGS existed. There are lots of drug targets we don’t know about, and lots of opportunity for more finely tuned tweaking of biology with gene therapies, cell therapies, advanced bio molecules etc.
Thanks Olek! Agreed on all fronts, there are big opportunities in exploring the vast space of possible bioactive compounds, and so much that can be done in identifying new targets or approaches. Great fodder for a future post. I might run a draft by you to make sure I'm not missing anything important!