My guess is that there will be some kind of huge explosion (possibly the next bubble) in biotech within the next few years when DNA sequencing using nanopore [1] hits a price point that makes DNA sequencing something you just do with thinking about the cost. Today it is too expensive, so you have to think about this huge expense in your lab / research budget. Soon, the cost of DNA comes down so it becomes more of a commodity and a tool that researchers can just use at will. Later, there will be an explosion of usage as the tech becomes a common household item. We will see that nanopore will be integrated in all kinds of sensors, your smart watch, fitness tracker, and kitchens (to check your food quality). Some even say that it will replace the microscope.
You have to get pretty lucky to invent something and get it though all trials and approval, but then you only get to earn money on it for a short period before it goes generic. There is literally no way to build a durable competitive moat in biotech. You just have to keep getting lucky. Eli Lilly has had a streak of luck lately, Pfizer and Biogen have been swinging and missing a lot.
metalman · 2d ago
bio is hard
bio is still in the investigative stage in many ways, and much of what we do is treating symptoms rather than the often unknown causes of disease
there are so many processeses that are useing wildly complex chemicals (protiens, enzymes, etc)
in miniscule quantites, that are used up in there incredibly brief existances, and we can only infer them from the simple fact that something happened
and things changed.
Now there is a backtracking on "junk dna", ooopsy
baby.
the good part is that with each thing we learn we are that little bit closer to bieng able to engineer the bio chemisry we need to achive a given goal
the bad part is that it might take 100 trillion to make back the first one,as there will be no partial solution
or who knows, the roseta stone for DNA/RNA could be waiting just around the corner
anovikov · 2d ago
So probably, saturation has been reached just simply? You can't pour money endlessly into the same thing hoping it will keep bringing returns infinitely. Eventually the opportunity is just exhausted. I wonder why is it a surprise to anyone.
jakobnissen · 2d ago
That doesn't seem right for biology. There's just way too much stuff we don't understand, but which we could understand, because it's there, right in front of us.
Maybe there are some fundamental limits to how much biology we can fix by putting drugs in our bodies, but I also strongly suspect we are nowhere near that limit.
dsign · 2d ago
I think we are very close to that limit. I mean, with the right set of drugs applied in the right way during the right timespans and correctly targeted, you can give a person wings and they can take flight. But all of those constraints are very specific to the person and to their current biological condition. The pipeline for drugs today is for the drugs, not for an individual’s peculiarities.
We need a fundamental breakthrough in the way we do medicine (and preventive medicine). Digital twins[^1] of individuals need to become widespread, and today they aren’t even used in research settings, as far as I know. And, to be honest, this is not at all an easy feat. It is, however, something I would love to work on if I had time and resources; humans and even mice are extremely far-fetched, but perhaps hydrozoans can be cracked as a first milestone.
Making drugs isn't about understanding. It's about educated guesses and lots of trial and error. Biotech funding has no patience for deep understanding.
Most drug research ends up as a money sink because investors lose patience watching scientists play whack-a-molecule.
Some drugs end up making a lot of their money for intended uses that aren't directly related to the initial research. It's easier (and cheaper) to repurpose known drugs for new indications.
Rethinking biology is a terrible pitch but it's probably the only way we will get true breakthroughs that go beyond symptom cover up.
HardCodedBias · 1d ago
Legislators have made the business almost impossible. The regulatory barriers to creating a new drug are immense and the IP laws give very little protection.
Further, many countries will simply ignore IP laws if a drug is successful.
We need to figure this out so that investment will be made.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopore_sequencing
bio is still in the investigative stage in many ways, and much of what we do is treating symptoms rather than the often unknown causes of disease
there are so many processeses that are useing wildly complex chemicals (protiens, enzymes, etc) in miniscule quantites, that are used up in there incredibly brief existances, and we can only infer them from the simple fact that something happened and things changed.
Now there is a backtracking on "junk dna", ooopsy baby. the good part is that with each thing we learn we are that little bit closer to bieng able to engineer the bio chemisry we need to achive a given goal the bad part is that it might take 100 trillion to make back the first one,as there will be no partial solution or who knows, the roseta stone for DNA/RNA could be waiting just around the corner
Maybe there are some fundamental limits to how much biology we can fix by putting drugs in our bodies, but I also strongly suspect we are nowhere near that limit.
We need a fundamental breakthrough in the way we do medicine (and preventive medicine). Digital twins[^1] of individuals need to become widespread, and today they aren’t even used in research settings, as far as I know. And, to be honest, this is not at all an easy feat. It is, however, something I would love to work on if I had time and resources; humans and even mice are extremely far-fetched, but perhaps hydrozoans can be cracked as a first milestone.
[^1]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/digital-twin/
Most drug research ends up as a money sink because investors lose patience watching scientists play whack-a-molecule.
Some drugs end up making a lot of their money for intended uses that aren't directly related to the initial research. It's easier (and cheaper) to repurpose known drugs for new indications.
Rethinking biology is a terrible pitch but it's probably the only way we will get true breakthroughs that go beyond symptom cover up.
Further, many countries will simply ignore IP laws if a drug is successful.
We need to figure this out so that investment will be made.