Solving protein folding and related problems might be enough to create a new era of progress. Look at the issues we have with vaccines. If we could run computer simulations that tell us what kind of antibodies the body creates when given different antigens we would gain a lot in vaccine design. That means we could make a lot of progress on a universal flu vaccine and an AIDS vaccine.
Designing protein to catalyse various chemical progresses is also a huge win.
If AlphaFold 2 is as accurate as its creators have claimed it undoubtedly represents an enormous technical leap. However, it remains to be seen how regulatory constraints and IP laws will erode its value. mRNA vaccines also represent a huge advancement, but were it not for COVID-19 lowering normal regulatory barriers (and providing a deluge of capital), they would still be a decade away, despite most of the fundamental technology already being ready.
With or without advanced protein folding simulations, so long as we remain in an environment where it costs billions to get a novel medical treatment to mass market, there’s little doubt the full potential of this breakthrough will not be realized anytime soon. The question is, how much progress will remain possible working within these constraints. I still expect it will aid in numerous future medical breakthroughs but I dunno about it unilaterally ushering in a new era of progress.
I don’t think the regulatory barrier against mRNA vaccines were completely unreasonable. If we for example at a recent paper that describes the problems with PEGylated anything (including mRNA) from 2019:
The administration of PEGylated drugs can lead to the production of anti-PEG antibodies(anti-PEG immunoglobulin M (IgM)) and immune response (Figure 1) [30]. Due to these phenomena,the PEG-conjugation of drugs/NPs often only provides a biological advantage during the first dose of a treatment course. By the second dose, the PEGylated agents have been recognized by themononuclear phagocyte system in the spleen and liver and are rapidly cleared from circulation.
We now have a way to deliever mRNA a few times per person to people but outside of pandemic conditions it’s unclear why you want to make the few times that you can effectively give mRNA to a person a vaccine that likely could be made is well via established methods at the cost of maybe not being able to give the person later an mRNA cancer treatment because of too much PEG immunogenicity.
The side effects of the second dose of an mRNA vaccines we see currently are higher then the side effects we see from our well tested vaccine formulations.
Solving protein folding and related problems might be enough to create a new era of progress. Look at the issues we have with vaccines. If we could run computer simulations that tell us what kind of antibodies the body creates when given different antigens we would gain a lot in vaccine design. That means we could make a lot of progress on a universal flu vaccine and an AIDS vaccine.
Designing protein to catalyse various chemical progresses is also a huge win.
If AlphaFold 2 is as accurate as its creators have claimed it undoubtedly represents an enormous technical leap. However, it remains to be seen how regulatory constraints and IP laws will erode its value. mRNA vaccines also represent a huge advancement, but were it not for COVID-19 lowering normal regulatory barriers (and providing a deluge of capital), they would still be a decade away, despite most of the fundamental technology already being ready.
With or without advanced protein folding simulations, so long as we remain in an environment where it costs billions to get a novel medical treatment to mass market, there’s little doubt the full potential of this breakthrough will not be realized anytime soon. The question is, how much progress will remain possible working within these constraints. I still expect it will aid in numerous future medical breakthroughs but I dunno about it unilaterally ushering in a new era of progress.
I don’t think the regulatory barrier against mRNA vaccines were completely unreasonable. If we for example at a recent paper that describes the problems with PEGylated anything (including mRNA) from 2019:
We now have a way to deliever mRNA a few times per person to people but outside of pandemic conditions it’s unclear why you want to make the few times that you can effectively give mRNA to a person a vaccine that likely could be made is well via established methods at the cost of maybe not being able to give the person later an mRNA cancer treatment because of too much PEG immunogenicity.
The side effects of the second dose of an mRNA vaccines we see currently are higher then the side effects we see from our well tested vaccine formulations.