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Foldit Player May Have Created a Useful Protein

Posted by kdawson on from the know-when-to-hold-'em dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The organizers of the game Foldit, where you fold proteins for scientific research, announced that a user has found a protein that may be able to bind influenza viruses. Researchers plan to test the protein in a lab over the next few weeks to see if it might be medically useful."

9 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. And who gets the patent for it? by MartinSchou · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And who gets the patent(s), money etc. for this particular protein?

    1. Re:And who gets the patent for it? by poetmatt · · Score: 2, Interesting

      research isn't that expensive.

      When are people going to realize that pharmaceutical and medical research isn't that expensive?

      it's infinitely more complicated than most things, but we wouldn't have the industries we have today if they were magically prohibitively expensive.

    2. Re:And who gets the patent for it? by gzipped_tar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      http://fold.it/portal/node/267249

      """Foldit project was initiated with the goal of democratizing science, and we stand behind that. the process of discovery and the eventual results of game play will all be open domain.

      """

      Not sure if that claim is backed up by legal documents. The game is suspiciously vague in legal matters. No software license. No EULA. Nothing about patents.

      Or perhaps there is, but not released to the public.

      --
      Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
    3. Re:And who gets the patent for it? by Kitkoan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it's not expensive to run one trial.

      it's expensive to run lots of trials. Spread that cost to the CDC, NIH, the WHO, various teaching hospitals, universities, pharmacos, foreign medical systems... and yes, research gets cheap per study.

      Problem is, the companies spend even more money on ads then medical R&D.

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    4. Re:And who gets the patent for it? by tehcyder · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Problem is, the companies spend even more money on ads then medical R&D.

      That is the reality of capitalism, so depending on your point of view it's either a necessary evil, or another reason to have some sort of socialist planned economy (at least in some areas).

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    5. Re:And who gets the patent for it? by Arancaytar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Someone in the industry told me that it consists of immense up-front investments before a new drug is approved, which may then pay of tenfold in the remaining years until the patent runs out - or turn out to be a complete loss, if the studies are inconclusive or the substance is not safe in humans.

      Supposedly it's like playing poker with the company deciding to invest hundreds of millions more or abandon the research they've done so far.

      (Which doesn't include the money the company loses on lawsuits if they *really* fuck it up. TeGenero went bust the same year after their ill-fated TGN1412 study, and Bayer needed years to recover from the Lipobay disaster.)

  2. So... what's the user win? by Shag · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just wondering. Is there a "prize?" Like getting the first dose of whatever-it-turns-into?

    --
    Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  3. Some people are just very good at this by Xoc-S · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I played fold.it for a few months a year and half ago. I was better than most at it, but there was one guy who almost always got the best score on every protein he worked on. He was a mutant at it; the Michael Jordan of protein folding. I joked that it was like The Last Starfighter , he was being selected for being taken off planet by the aliens who developed the game. He had a way of identifying parts of a protein that could be modified to improve it. By studying people like him...on what they see that nobody else does, can lead to improved automated algorithms, which can lead to significant improvements in medicines.

    Finding optimal folds of proteins is an NP-Hard problem, so having any heuristic algorithm improvements can vastly increase the chance of having automated tools find useful folds in reasonable amounts of time.

  4. Pauling and Vitamin C by rs79 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Go look at the literature. Pauling showed that the mechanism virii use to transport glucose also transport C and that very high doses of C (100G/d IV) kill virii and do not harm the patient.

    This represented a significant threat to big pharma who then spent the rest of his life "discrediting" him by doing stupid shit like giving *oral* doses of C, finding it didn't work they calling him a quack.

    You'll notice, if you look hard enough they were able to reverse polio in the 50s with this technique that supposedly works on *any* virus.

    Don't even mention quackwatch.com - it's funded by big pharma.

    Pauling is the only guy that ever got two nobel prizes in two different areas unshared.

    Don't believe me, go look at what he did and the troubles he had and follow the money.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?