From the perspective of a PhD trained cancer researcher, working on drug discovery/development in academia:
The cost might seem high. Some people think the cost is really going to make these types of cellular based therapy difficult to push into wide spread use. I'm more hopeful that new technology will drive down the cost in coming years. The techniques used to make these cells are years old at this point. That's just how long it takes to get things approved and trials conducted.
But remember the following:
1. This isn't (nor would you want it to be) front line therapy. It's for relapsed or non-responsive b-cell ALL. The side effect profile is risky, this therapy can kill a person, and there are life long implications to receiving it.
2. This is the first approved cellular therapy for wide spread use. It cost a massive amount of money to do the research and push this through the approval process. Billion of dollars for a product not very many people will get.
3. It isn't something that can be made and stored on a shelf. They take your cells out, process them, use a retrovirus to insert a new chimeric antigen receptor into them to target B-cells, and then reinfuse that into the patient. It's personalized medicine to the extreme.
3. The facilities to do what's listed in 2 are insanely costly to build and run, as their are extreme biosafety concerns when altering cells and putting them back into a person. The use of retroviruses makes the biosafety converses higher. Newer technologies will improve this aspect, but haven't been vetted and approved yet.
4. There would be many people involved in making these modified T cells, all of whom likely have masters degrees or PhDs. I'm not talking about the research side to develop them... but production. It's that involved.
5. This is in line with or in most cases cheaper than bone marrow transplants, which are fairly common for other cancers.
6. Novartis will only bill for the product if a patient shows a response within 30 days.
7. These patients have essentially few other options and would likely die without this therapy.
What we really need is jobs for all of these new trains to fill once they graduate. Talk to any recent PhD in the biomedical sciences, engineering, etc, and ask them what they think of the push for greater STEM education efforts. They'll tell you it's basically BS. We can't place the number of graduates we currently have into even remotely well paying, long term, jobs.
Now, we might need more STEM education and training for more technical, lower level, jobs. But of course that's never how these programs are billed. It's not as sexy of a sell to parents and students! Instead we push people to go to graduate school, get a MS or PhD. Then dump them into a market with slashed education funding, so there are few prospects in the university system. Combine that with a large number of foreign applicants for postdoc and technician positions that are willing to work for MUCH less in terms of wages and you've got a disaster. US citizens do have a slight advantage in that most of the NIH/NSF funded pre and postdoc training fellowships/grants are only open to citizens. But, those are so small in number and highly competitive that it doesn't have a large effect.
We need to face the fact that we're really training WAY too many PhDs and even masters graduates in most of the STEM fields right now. It's a vicious cycle though. Profs want lots of PhD students because they are very inexpensive labor. Likewise with postdocs... for their training and amount of work they are expected to do... they are paid much less than minimum wage. Moreover, most profs will kick out postdocs after 2-3 years because of pay raises that some institutions mandate. It's just easier to dump the experienced person and higher in a new 1st year that gets paid 10k less, pump and dump... factory style.
There have been a number of really excellent articles written about this problem over the last few years. Science and Nature have both dedicate page space to the topic. Some suggest forcing researchers funded by NIH/NSF monies to be required to higher long term technicians to their labs and reduce graduate student/postdoc usage. Such actions would start to limit new graduate number, while at the same time providing employment for scientists that aren't interested or can't get a faculty position in academia or don't want to work for industry. A lot of people also think it would help lab productivity, as you'd retain talent and skill sets that were honed over years of work.
Lysozyme is a very robust protein found in hen egg whites. This process is going to be VERY difficult to apply to other proteins.
Even with purified lysozyme, you can boil it for extended amounts of time and it will refold on it's own just fine... in very short time scales. You can lyophilize it down to a powder, store it for years, add water... and it will refold and be active. (Lysozyme is an enzyme that degrades bacterial cell walls.)
Loved the show you hosted a number of years about about the development and implementation of the SOSUS system. Can you speculate or comment on the types of next generation technologies that could potentially fill in some of the gaps we now have with the reduction in traditional SOSUS effectiveness against quiet(er) ships from other nations? Presumably we still have to keep track of other countries missile and attack subs, is that much harder now than in the past?
At least they are listening. But, it would be nice if they pushed a unified OS between the Chrome stuff and Android. Annoying when a phone/tablet has more software available than a "laptop".
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project. We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
they're going to do something that is completely against/opposite any and all products or direction they have ever made or gone? I'll believe it when I see it!
They don't have the best track record on original products:)
This is just an example of a membrane permeable dye for ATP detection. They are just looking at cells grown in cell culture media....
While this is cool, it is far from a replacement for animal models. For example, this would be useless to test the immune system response to a pathogen. It wouldn't let you determine how a bacterial pathogen enters its host and disseminates through the body. It wouldn't let you see what blood stream levels are produced for a given oral dose of a drug.
Animal research sucks... but so does disease. No one does animal research because they enjoy it (well, OK maybe a few crazies out there).
They didn't specifically modify the virus if I understand the article correctly. They simply passaged it many times through a ferret host. Selective pressure caused the mutations leading the to increased transmission ability. The virus's DNA was then sequenced to find the mutations. All of them were known mutations found in nature, but just not in the same viral genome until that point. That knowledge is important for scientists working on infectious disease.
They didn't set out to introduce specific mutations in an attempt to make a super virus. While the result is somewhat similar, the means to the end are important here. An analogy would be a lab constructing a strain of S. aureus that is vancomycin and methicillin resistant, vs reporting the seqeuce of genes responsible for a natural isolate found to show that phenotype.
Learning more about disease is the only way to prevent/treat it. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that everything will be OK just isn't going to cut it.
Because the poor overworked doctor that you are seeing has to be able to pay back the $300K in debt they owe to the government. Until we fundamentally change the way doctors are trained and, more importantly, who funds the bill, nothing is going to change.
"The traditional Office top-line menu, with its drop-down File, Edit, View, and other items, is gone forever and not even available as an option."
So it sounds like you can't just turn off the eye candy. I'm sorry, But I would rather take a series of menus than a bunch of CRAP cluttering up my screen any day of the week. I even have a 20+" display and wouldn't want that junk. I couldn't imagine trying to use that on a laptop.
Yea, I would imagine hey would fly over Canada most of the way. Since there isn't much up there, for the amount of land mass they have, they dont have to worry as much about the sonic booms tearing $hit up. They'd just have to route around large cities... and slow down when coming across the border to the US into NY.
Yep... Bose spreakers/electronics are pure and total trash. It's all marketing to stupid people by saying "we're the best". Get a real set of speakers and then laugh your ass off at the morons at best buy getting bose crap. Better yet... go to a Bose store and hassle the sales people;-)
Exactly! And I feel that people downloading music legally or not actually incourages CD sales. I know it does for me at least. While mp3 quality is fine for my Ipod and headphones or listening to at work... or in the car, there is no way I want to listen to them on my stereo at home. So, I download some songs here and there, some through Itunes, some off bands websites, and some throuh P2P. When I find something I like and am interested in... I go out and buy the record. Why? some may ask.... well, I want to support the artists and I don't want to listen to something that sounds like it is being played through a Fischer Price radio. (I know some quality, high bit rate mp3s can sound OK... but nothing like the real thing played through even a decent stereo.)
This kind of practice is equal to the simple mindedness that a large numbers of doctors and the medical community in the US do every day and think there are no consequences to their actions. They over prescribe antibiotics to patients who a lot of the time don't have any need for them. Like people who have the flu wanting antibiotics.... and the doctors give them to them just so they will shut up... pathetic really. So, since everyone with a runny nose gets antibiotics... we have widespread antibiotics resistance in bacteria. Nature is going to find a way to survive. When we use herbicides and antimicrobial agents irresponsibly we are really just making it worse for ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
From the perspective of a PhD trained cancer researcher, working on drug discovery/development in academia:
The cost might seem high. Some people think the cost is really going to make these types of cellular based therapy difficult to push into wide spread use. I'm more hopeful that new technology will drive down the cost in coming years. The techniques used to make these cells are years old at this point. That's just how long it takes to get things approved and trials conducted.
But remember the following:
1. This isn't (nor would you want it to be) front line therapy. It's for relapsed or non-responsive b-cell ALL. The side effect profile is risky, this therapy can kill a person, and there are life long implications to receiving it.
2. This is the first approved cellular therapy for wide spread use. It cost a massive amount of money to do the research and push this through the approval process. Billion of dollars for a product not very many people will get.
3. It isn't something that can be made and stored on a shelf. They take your cells out, process them, use a retrovirus to insert a new chimeric antigen receptor into them to target B-cells, and then reinfuse that into the patient. It's personalized medicine to the extreme.
3. The facilities to do what's listed in 2 are insanely costly to build and run, as their are extreme biosafety concerns when altering cells and putting them back into a person. The use of retroviruses makes the biosafety converses higher. Newer technologies will improve this aspect, but haven't been vetted and approved yet.
4. There would be many people involved in making these modified T cells, all of whom likely have masters degrees or PhDs. I'm not talking about the research side to develop them... but production. It's that involved.
5. This is in line with or in most cases cheaper than bone marrow transplants, which are fairly common for other cancers.
6. Novartis will only bill for the product if a patient shows a response within 30 days.
7. These patients have essentially few other options and would likely die without this therapy.
What could possibly go wrong? :)
What we really need is jobs for all of these new trains to fill once they graduate. Talk to any recent PhD in the biomedical sciences, engineering, etc, and ask them what they think of the push for greater STEM education efforts. They'll tell you it's basically BS. We can't place the number of graduates we currently have into even remotely well paying, long term, jobs.
Now, we might need more STEM education and training for more technical, lower level, jobs. But of course that's never how these programs are billed. It's not as sexy of a sell to parents and students! Instead we push people to go to graduate school, get a MS or PhD. Then dump them into a market with slashed education funding, so there are few prospects in the university system. Combine that with a large number of foreign applicants for postdoc and technician positions that are willing to work for MUCH less in terms of wages and you've got a disaster. US citizens do have a slight advantage in that most of the NIH/NSF funded pre and postdoc training fellowships/grants are only open to citizens. But, those are so small in number and highly competitive that it doesn't have a large effect.
We need to face the fact that we're really training WAY too many PhDs and even masters graduates in most of the STEM fields right now. It's a vicious cycle though. Profs want lots of PhD students because they are very inexpensive labor. Likewise with postdocs... for their training and amount of work they are expected to do... they are paid much less than minimum wage. Moreover, most profs will kick out postdocs after 2-3 years because of pay raises that some institutions mandate. It's just easier to dump the experienced person and higher in a new 1st year that gets paid 10k less, pump and dump... factory style.
There have been a number of really excellent articles written about this problem over the last few years. Science and Nature have both dedicate page space to the topic. Some suggest forcing researchers funded by NIH/NSF monies to be required to higher long term technicians to their labs and reduce graduate student/postdoc usage. Such actions would start to limit new graduate number, while at the same time providing employment for scientists that aren't interested or can't get a faculty position in academia or don't want to work for industry. A lot of people also think it would help lab productivity, as you'd retain talent and skill sets that were honed over years of work.
Maybe CISCO should hire a Transporter :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This is the form factor the 13' Macbook Pro should be.
I love my Mid2014 13", but the form factor needs an update. Especially with competing models like this coming out.
I'll still take the build quality and metal construction of my Macbook though.
Lysozyme is a very robust protein found in hen egg whites. This process is going to be VERY difficult to apply to other proteins.
Even with purified lysozyme, you can boil it for extended amounts of time and it will refold on it's own just fine... in very short time scales. You can lyophilize it down to a powder, store it for years, add water... and it will refold and be active. (Lysozyme is an enzyme that degrades bacterial cell walls.)
Loved the show you hosted a number of years about about the development and implementation of the SOSUS system. Can you speculate or comment on the types of next generation technologies that could potentially fill in some of the gaps we now have with the reduction in traditional SOSUS effectiveness against quiet(er) ships from other nations? Presumably we still have to keep track of other countries missile and attack subs, is that much harder now than in the past?
Thanks!
Talk about a straw man.
"Mainstream" tech sites are bad enough already.
At least they are listening. But, it would be nice if they pushed a unified OS between the Chrome stuff and Android. Annoying when a phone/tablet has more software available than a "laptop".
I'm assuming you can just flip the watch "upside down" and the software will orient the display for lefties.
The digital crown and lower button would be switched for which one is on top. But, I that could be adapted to.
Or Apple might have a lefty version in the works. Since it's 4+ months out... it's all speculation.
Shadows of the Empire is an awesome book. So much good backstory and plotting. Loved it.
Knights and Rogue are also excellent.
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----
Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))
I'm not sure why the editors think that simply continuing to blindly post stories is going to change things here.
We aren't talking about the news!
Respect your users!
Agreed, the little news blurbs on the page would be quite useless without the discussions.
While my user ID isn't terribly low. I would stop reading and contributing to /. if the "beta" goes through. It's terrible.
Guess end users will be seeing a fee increase coming our way. Awesome.
they're going to do something that is completely against/opposite any and all products or direction they have ever made or gone? I'll believe it when I see it!
They don't have the best track record on original products :)
This is just an example of a membrane permeable dye for ATP detection. They are just looking at cells grown in cell culture media....
While this is cool, it is far from a replacement for animal models. For example, this would be useless to test the immune system response to a pathogen. It wouldn't let you determine how a bacterial pathogen enters its host and disseminates through the body. It wouldn't let you see what blood stream levels are produced for a given oral dose of a drug.
Animal research sucks... but so does disease. No one does animal research because they enjoy it (well, OK maybe a few crazies out there).
They didn't specifically modify the virus if I understand the article correctly. They simply passaged it many times through a ferret host. Selective pressure caused the mutations leading the to increased transmission ability. The virus's DNA was then sequenced to find the mutations. All of them were known mutations found in nature, but just not in the same viral genome until that point. That knowledge is important for scientists working on infectious disease.
They didn't set out to introduce specific mutations in an attempt to make a super virus. While the result is somewhat similar, the means to the end are important here.
An analogy would be a lab constructing a strain of S. aureus that is vancomycin and methicillin resistant, vs reporting the seqeuce of genes responsible for a natural isolate found to show that phenotype.
Learning more about disease is the only way to prevent/treat it. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that everything will be OK just isn't going to cut it.
Because the poor overworked doctor that you are seeing has to be able to pay back the $300K in debt they owe to the government. Until we fundamentally change the way doctors are trained and, more importantly, who funds the bill, nothing is going to change.
From the article:
"The traditional Office top-line menu, with its drop-down File, Edit, View, and other items, is gone forever and not even available as an option."
So it sounds like you can't just turn off the eye candy. I'm sorry, But I would rather take a series of menus than a bunch of CRAP cluttering up my screen any day of the week. I even have a 20+" display and wouldn't want that junk. I couldn't imagine trying to use that on a laptop.
Yea, I would imagine hey would fly over Canada most of the way. Since there isn't much up there, for the amount of land mass they have, they dont have to worry as much about the sonic booms tearing $hit up. They'd just have to route around large cities... and slow down when coming across the border to the US into NY.
Yep... Bose spreakers/electronics are pure and total trash. It's all marketing to stupid people by saying "we're the best". Get a real set of speakers and then laugh your ass off at the morons at best buy getting bose crap. Better yet... go to a Bose store and hassle the sales people ;-)
Exactly! And I feel that people downloading music legally or not actually incourages CD sales. I know it does for me at least. While mp3 quality is fine for my Ipod and headphones or listening to at work... or in the car, there is no way I want to listen to them on my stereo at home. So, I download some songs here and there, some through Itunes, some off bands websites, and some throuh P2P. When I find something I like and am interested in... I go out and buy the record. Why? some may ask.... well, I want to support the artists and I don't want to listen to something that sounds like it is being played through a Fischer Price radio. (I know some quality, high bit rate mp3s can sound OK... but nothing like the real thing played through even a decent stereo.)
This kind of practice is equal to the simple mindedness that a large numbers of doctors and the medical community in the US do every day and think there are no consequences to their actions. They over prescribe antibiotics to patients who a lot of the time don't have any need for them. Like people who have the flu wanting antibiotics.... and the doctors give them to them just so they will shut up... pathetic really. So, since everyone with a runny nose gets antibiotics... we have widespread antibiotics resistance in bacteria. Nature is going to find a way to survive. When we use herbicides and antimicrobial agents irresponsibly we are really just making it worse for ourselves.