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Startup developing HIV/AIDS vaccine is 2nd nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator
- pg 13y agoLest anyone be confused by that headline, there are 6 other nonprofits in the current batch. So there is a 7-way tie for 2nd nonprofit.
- playhard 13y agoMaking the world better, one batch at a time!
- ujsfdo 13y agoSorry, you're still not getting into YC14
- simonebrunozzi 13y agoWell done, pg.
- cabbeer 13y agoDo you have a link to the startups? As an International Development grad this is very exciting.
- kriro 13y agoMaybe I'm blind or searchiotic but cliffs on what the other 6 are doing? I think YC is one of the few places that could actually disrupt the academic publishing and reputation-bargaining field so I'm hoping some nonprofit will tackle this eventually.
- pg 13y agoThey haven't all announced we funded them yet, but another one that did today is Zidisha: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/23/zidisha-launches-a-kickstarter-style-micro-lending-platform-for-low-income-entrepreneurs-in-developing-countries/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/23/zidisha-launches-a-kickstar... Incidentally, Scribd started out as a way to disrupt academic publishing. To do it they wrote a lot of stuff for handling PDFs, and as often happens in startups that became the tail that wagged the dog.
- kriro 13y agoLooks pretty cool. Having lived in Africa for a bit I like this idea (and hope they can get around certain issues). Just created an account and completed a loan request by one of the borrowers (might be the first 0% loan I have ever given outside of my family) :)
- napoleoncomplex 13y agoI have been at times vocal in opposition to the type of companies that YC has funded in the past few batches, as the possibility of them improving life quality for people that actually need the improvement seemed quite small, largely based on a prospect of trickle down technology, which turns out to be as likely as trickle down economics, in that it rarely trickles out of San Francisco. Not saying those start-ups were easy, or not worth doing, as doing any start-up is by nature incredibly hard, and following your passion is always worth doing. But, YC's prominent role seemed ideal for doing something more, and it just didn't come. I'll be equally vocal in support now. Watsi was the first sign of light, Immunity Project the second. This is what needs support, what needs money and hype. Realistically it won't get as much money as it needs, but with someone like YC pushing nonprofits like this, it's a huge step in the right direction. I can't wait to see the other nonprofits. I know I sound like a bitter communist (is there any other kind?), but this really feels like an island of reason in the bubbly ocean of SF. Good luck to this batch.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bfe 13y agoHas YC considered any sort of broader access to the non-profits' portion of demo day for potential donors?
- danenania 13y agoOut of curiosity, how do you approach non-profits from an investment point of view? Is there some equivalent to equity? Is the goal to break even, or are you essentially just providing a large initial donation? Really cool to see yc taking things in this direction.
- kfk 13y agoDoes this mean that contracting the virus with the vaccine will give you HIV but not AIDS? What about being a carrier, would you still be a carrier?
- icinnamon 13y agoIf you're vaccinated, your body would fight off the HIV virus. You would have an upgraded immune system. In terms of independently curing AIDS, although the vaccine has therapeutic potential, it mostly likely applies only to those particular individuals living with HIV who have normal immune systems – i.e. those successfully managed on HAART medications. The vaccine may prevent AIDS, but it will not cure AIDS.
- humanfromearth 13y agoSo have they developed a vaccine, but they need money for trials, delivery..? How exactly would they go about and test if it works on humans? Are there people who volunteer to get infected with HIV?
- mschuster91 13y agoMonkeys. After all, the HI virus originates from apes and they are similar enough to humans for clinical tests. And as for "ethical research", once you know the vaccine will not harm you, give it to a big enough group of "risk people" in Africa or another HIV hotspot and look if they, compared with a placebo group, are immune from HIV.
- redofrac 13y agoFor human trials of this nature, typically at-risk populations can be used, and it's seen if there's a reduction in infection rates.
- icinnamon 13y agoExactly. In this case, we're lucky enough to use an amazing clinic set up in Durban, South Africa, which has a ~15% prevalence rate of HIV.
- Robin_Message 13y agoThis sounds great. I'm genuinely interested, how is the potential vaccine going to be presented to volunteers in Phase I? And do you also deliver a placebo vaccine for blinding? It seems like believing you are vaccinated would increase risky behaviour. This is bad in itself. It is also bad if the vaccine is only partially effective, since the risk effect might balance the vaccine effect. With a placebo, knowing you only have a 50/50 chance of getting the actual trial vaccine might also help mitigate the risk effect. Anyway, just wondering how all this works. Finding an effective vaccine would be fantastic; keep up the good work!
- 13y ago
- FooBarWidget 13y agoI don't get it, isn't the point of investing to get the investment back in many multiples? How do you get your investment back if it's a non-profit?
- mintplant 13y agoThe betterment of the world as a whole?
- FooBarWidget 13y agoThat's great, but the job of investors is to make money, not to better the world, isn't it?
- weisser 13y agoThe job of investors is to do what they want with their money and make sure they have an alignment of goals with those they give their money to.
- FooBarWidget 13y agoI didn't mean to say that they can't do whatever they want, or that they're incapable of helping the world. But if the investor does not expect his investment back, then that would make it a donation, which - as far as I can tell from the article - this is not.
- thomson 13y agoFrom their page on funding non-profits: http://ycombinator.com/np.html http://ycombinator.com/np.html "Since some people were confused when we funded Watsi, I'd better clarify that the money we're putting into the nonprofits will be a charitable donation, rather than an investment in the narrow sense. We won't have any financial interest in them."
- tptacek 13y ago
- mef 13y agoDoes anyone know why this approach is "viewed as a rogue project by the immunology community"? Is it just because it's new, or is there something more fundamental that conflicts with established immunology?
- naveenspark 13y agoHi all, this is Naveen from Immunity Project YC team. The fact that we are using ML to identify epitopes that are the preferred targets on the virus for HIV controllers is key to what makes our project unique. This is a newer approach for developing a vaccine and therefore makes it "rogue."
- kyro 13y agoThis sounds pretty fascinating. Do you have any links/resources that dives more in depth into this approach?
- ajessup 13y agoThis talk at GitHub makes good watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8syV5t2_3QI&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8syV5t2_3QI&feature=youtu.be
- fsniper 13y agoBy the way. That "rouge" approach is what would I have go through as a sysadmin if this was an computer related problem. I think you deserve to be a case study in immunology and be very very successful. Sometimes thinking out of the box and letting go of established ways will lead to results. Edit: Also in computer sciences we use differentiating between two known states to find out how to change on state to the other one perfectly. In immunology do you use similar approaches?
- dekhn 13y agoI can easily find plenty of papers using ML for HIV epitope analysis.
- icinnamon 13y agoHey everyone! Ian Cinnamon here from the Immunity Project YC team. The crowdfunding link in the article appears broken (we're working on getting them to fix it). In the meantime, you can visit our campaign here: https://pledge.immunityproject.org/ https://pledge.immunityproject.org/
- yarou 13y agoVery interesting. I noticed the article mentions that the algorithm used is "similar to the techniques of spam filtering" (paraphrasing). Would it happen to be a Bayesian Network or a logical agent?
- normloman 13y agoThat'll never work. It has to involve social media somehow. Or apps.
- ig1 13y agoGiven the high cost (hundreds of millions) of taking a vaccine through clinical trials, FDA approval and production I'm curious why the choice to go the non-profit route. Is the growth plan to raise the money from large donors (Gates foundation, Wellcome Trust, etc.) or to licence the technology to more traditional pharma firms ?
- naveenspark 13y agoMost of the people who are living w/ HIV worldwide can't afford to pay for treatment. From our perspective it doesn't make sense to charge for something that the people who need it most just can't pay for. By making our project non profit we can focus on the real goal, which is ending HIV/AIDS and not creating ROI for shareholders. Yes we will need to raise significant funding over the lifetime of the project to complete this goal. The good news is that our team is very efficient. The current experiment we are hoping to execute will be done at a fraction of the price and in a fraction of the time then what it would typically cost / take at a major pharma company.
- sgift 13y agoIs there some special "trick" that makes your team/approach so efficient or (just) the usual ones, e.g. less overhead due to small size, less bureaucracy than big pharma and so on?
- naveenspark 13y agoYes our overhead is far lower. Our other "trick" is that several members of our team are multi-talented. For example Dr. Herst can do tissue culture work, formulation development, analytical chemistry, and immunochemistry.
- limpon 13y agoI really really from all of my heart wish that your project will work. Seriously, the idea of a free HIV vaccine is amazing. But honestly, I believe that you might all be a bit naive when it comes to doing proper molecular biology experiments. There's a reason why most PhD students need several years to finish their studies and they mostly use just a few techniques. Doing experiments with humanized mice and HIV might sound easy on paper, but will turn out to be way more complicated than what you believe it to be now. Trust me, been there, done that. Anyways, I wish you all the best, I love it when people challenge old dogmas with new ideas. I'd appreciate it a lot if you could put some more information about the biology, especially the role if the immune system, online.
- anu_gupta 13y agoI'd like to understand why organisations like the Gates Foundation / NIH aren't excited by this approach? I'm assuming they've rejected this, which would explain the need to crowdfinance the next part. If they haven't rejected it, why aren't they being approached for grants? Also, where's the science? Having something in the FAQ that states "We're awaiting publication in a peer-reviewed journal" is, to be blunt, pretty lame. Is the data and research open access? If not, why not?
- ENGNR 13y agoAccording to the article Microsoft Research contributed $1M in 2011 (not the Gates Foundation but related)
- naveenspark 13y agoWe are pursuing all major funders we know of for funding for our work (including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation etc.). The challenge is that it takes significant time to prepare grants apps, and go through the process. Some large funders such as EJAF only accept grant applications once a year. HIV/AIDS is an urgent challenge. Therefore we are crowd funding these dollars now to move our project forward immediately. In terms of the PRJ question, the bottom line is its a chicken and egg problem. Its harder to get published if you release all of the data prior to publication. Post publication, our goal is to make our project as open access as humanely possible. All of that being said, we do have more information about our work on our site: http://www.immunityproject.org http://www.immunityproject.org. If you have specific questions about our approach please feel free to ask them.
- rgejman 13y agoI'm confused as to why you would encourage anyone to donate money to your organization without providing any data. I'm also confused about why you care about publication in traditional scientific mediums. You are starting a company and it would be in your interest to release as much data as possible about your successes in an attempt to raise money. Not to mention, there are some journals that will publish pre-printed data. Here's a partial list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_pr...) although take that list with a grain of salt because the pre-print policies may only really apply to math/physics publications.
- crystaln 13y agoI'm trying to understand what if any overlap a pharmaceutical nonprofit has with any value YC could add, from the scale of funds required, to product advice, to business model - everything seems entirely out of the range of YC's expertise.
- darklegend 13y agoJust had the same thoughts... They try to get crowdfunding - so this is maybe just a kind of good PR ;-) [Edit] Just to make it clear: Nothing against the project itself. Any chance of getting a HIV vaccine should be used!
- crystaln 13y agoI agree it seems on the surface like a mutually beneficial PR stunt, which would be pathetically shallow. On the other hand, this could be YC's foot in the door to disrupt the high margin, high investment, treatment over cure model of the health industry, in which case more power to them. We can expect to see YC spinning off a health division. That seems like quite the challenge - hope they know what they are getting themselves into. We do need more altruism in the health research market that will bring unpatentable cures to market instead of expensive long term treatments.
- yapcguy 13y agoYeah... Anyone know how much YC is contributing and what they get in exchange? Some kind of ownership of the company? Do people taking part in the $482,000 fund raiser get ownership of the company? Why doesn't YC just donate money as part of the fund raiser?
- jjoe 13y agoThis is one of those times when you take a step back, reflect, and look at the big picture. However much excited I am about my project, I realize that the stuff these guys are working on hits all the right notes. And then some.
- icinnamon 13y agoThanks, jjoe! We really appreciate your support.
- danielpal 13y agoThis is a really interesting project. I have so many questions and it seems others too. It would be great to do an AMA on Reddit or something. So one question: This "targetting capability" that HIV controllers have, which your goals is to give it to all of us, does it also have any other benefits? Does it also help protect us from other viruses?
- icinnamon 13y agoWe're absolutely planning on doing an AMA on reddit in the near future! The "targetting capability", definitely does have implications for other types of viruses. While this vaccine focuses on giving the power of HIV controllers to everybody, other controllers do exist. For example, there may be controllers for other viruses like Hepatitis, HPV, Herpes, or even things like other viruses that cause cancer.
- icinnamon 13y agoStarting our AMA now! http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1w29dx/we_are_creating_the_hivaids_vaccine_to_give_away/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1w29dx/we_are_creating...
- andrewfong 13y agoFrom the FAQ: "But, there are certain spots on HIV that rarely mutate, and these are the same highly specific targets that controller immune systems already recognize naturally. Our vaccine trains your immune system to attack those weak spots so that the virus is crippled even when it mutates. In other words, our vaccine shows the prime targets to your immune system so that it does not have to waste time and energy trying to figure out which ones are the best points of attack." How does the vaccine train your immune system? My (very limited) understanding of vaccines is that you would normally train the immune system to target these weak spots by creating an antibody that would bind to said weak spot. But from elsewhere on the page, it says that the project isn't working on an antibody approach. What am I missing?
- cma 13y agoI think they mean they train the immune system by creating an antigen, not an antibody, that mimics or is identical to the nonmutating antigen on the virus. Your immune system upregulates appropriate antibodies on its own through a feedback effect when certain cells (B cell?) that have randomly generated embedded antibodies on their cell membranes come across an antigen. These cells begin to divide faster, and the children code for and generate the same antibody as the parent. This ups the amount of cells with that particular antibody, increasing the probability that the antigen will be targeted. They trigger inflammation to increase the flow of blood, letting more immune cells per second pass through scan the area (probably not helpful for aids, but for a cut, a splinter or a tumor that is fixed in place it is useful). They also release freestanding antibodies with the same binding profile that can disable viruses and trigger other immune cells to come slurp them up. I think when they say they aren't taking an antibody approach they mean they aren't making an artificial antibody and just injecting it for passive immunity (sort of like injecting an immune system that can't do its own adaptation and upregulation) The main thing with vaccines I am still confused about is what the difference between them and allergy shots is, and how do the two end up with opposite effects? I guess there is somehow a different reaction to a spike of something vs a repeated presence. (Edit: never mind.. microspheres.. who knew?)
- Buttons840 13y ago
- cpursley 13y agoI'm all for this; more power to them. However, HIV/AIDS is already very preventable and had been on the decline for a decade or more. I'd rather see something like this effort, but for cancer. A disease that affects many more people. Actually, what I really want to see it a focus on stopping poaching, whaling, habitat destruction and ocean acidification. Even with all the disease, humans don't seem to have issues reproducing. Extending the human population, especially those of developing countries, only leads to more of the above. One day our children are going to say - "Cool, no more HIV, but what's a rainforest? what's a Rhinoceros? why can't we eat fish." Just saying.
- kyro 13y agoSo make it happen (seriously).
- naveenspark 13y agoHIV/AIDS is a giant problem. North of 35MM people are living with HIV worldwide and more are infected every day. Yes we have made strides in reducing infection rates, but we are far from solving this problem with existing approaches. To put this in context, nearly 5,000 people a day die from AIDS. That is like 10 747s falling out of the sky every single day. The only solution is a vaccine which is why we are doing what we are doing. There are many big problems for us to solve on our planet. HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest and hardest to solve.
- cpursley 13y ago
- jonhmchan 13y agoJust donated. Very cool.
- naveenspark 13y agoThank you for your support!
- rdl 13y agoThis is going to be really inconvenient for all the people who say "sure, you are good at making photo sharing apps and dating sites, but you don't cure cancer or anything."
- jjoonathan 13y agoI suspect that those people value the fact that this is happening more than the fact that they don't "get" to complain about it not happening.
- Fomite 13y agoBeing one of those people, and an Epidemiologist, if this team manages to succeed, I'll happily shut up.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoYeah, lets wait and see how fast they get their $25M. Giiven that photo sharing apps can get billions of dollars just like that, if the Immunity Project will have to struggle for their $25M, I'm giving up on SV altogether.
- cycrutchfield 13y agoPhoto sharing apps get money from VCs. Why would you expect that VCs would fund a non-profit millions of dollars?
- dylandrop 13y agoI'm a bit confused. Who is the "you" here?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- supersystem 13y agoGod forbid the people doing the actual work would get the credit.
- kriro 13y agoThis is very good news. Good luck.
- RoboTeddy 13y agoHow heavily does the project depend on obtaining correct target epitopes from Heckerman's protein Gibbs free energy simulation? Is there a chance that HIV won't be controlled even if we can induce the immune system to be capable of targeting some of the peptide sequences that controllers often target? (i.e., might there be something else at work in controllers?) Thanks for working on an important project!
- naveenspark 13y agoRight now the project is only relying epitopes derived from actual controller targets. Our hypothesis is that if we go after the epitopes that HIV controllers preferentially target that we will get an immune response with memory in humans just as we have so far in our animal studies. The only way to test this is to execute on our clinical trial in humans. The current experiment we are aiming to perform is a good middle ground since we will be immunizing human blood against HIV in a controlled environment and then testing that immunity.
- RoboTeddy 13y agoThe experiment in blood sounds interesting, I hope it works! It looks like there might be differences between controller immune systems and regular ones that don't have to do with choice of epitope: http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/19/infdis.jit643.abstract http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/19/infdi... Does this make it less likely that targeting specific epitopes is all there is to the picture? (I'm happy to assume that we'll get an immune response with memory in humans -- the question is, how confident should we be that that response will control HIV?)
- naveenspark 13y agoThe article is describing one of the many explanations that has been brought forward to explain why controllers do what they do. If you are looking for a common denominator across controllers broadly, the selective epitope targeting explanation seems to make the most sense to us and does not appear to be constrained by anything but the individual's HLA type which essentially determines what epitopes a particular individual's immune system can "see."
- unclebucknasty 13y agoOn one hand, it's clearly great news that this work is being funded. But, maybe I'm the odd guy, here. At a higher level, does it bother anyone else even slightly that more and more of the world's priorities are being set by fewer and fewer people? This is how it's been to some extent for millennia. But, with increasing income/wealth disparity in the world, its effect is amplified. This, of course, is a terrible example because I'm sure most can agree that attempting to cure such a devastating disease is worthy of funding. This is also not to disparage wealthy individuals (indeed, many would include me in the bunch). It just seems that very little sees the light of day unless an increasingly small group of people deem it so worthy. And, something about seeing the priorities of even our non-profits dictated by these few gives me pause. Yes, I know that philanthropy, foundations, etc. have always existed but, again, the rate of increase of absolute power and control accreting back to so few people like the days of yore seems inconsistent with freedom, democracy, and all the other good stuff so many have come to idealize for good reason.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoI get what you're talking about, but right now I personally feel happy that this effect is increasing, and I hope to be the part of this small group at some point. It's because, to be honest, majority of humans just doesn't give a crap about anything that's further than 10cm from the end of their noses. The opposite of world priorities being set by fewer and fewer people is not lots of good things happening, it's nothing of importance ever happening. Want a proof? Just look at internal politics of every democratic state. Tons of resources get wasted, and nothing ever gets done, because people just can't agree on anything.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago>I personally feel happy that this effect is increasing Well, it's all good until it isn't. If the priorities of a few people impact so many (including you) and you no longer agree with them, then what do you do? >I hope to be the part of this small group at some point. I think it's actually a shame that you'd need to be a part of the "small group" in order to have a voice. Ideally, we'd all have at least the capacity to participate in our world without first requiring the blessing of a handful of gatekeepers. And, the irony is that's the thing: It's actually harder for you to make it into the small group sans the blessing of the few who are in it. For instance, where is the real democratizing effect of the Net? For a recent, specific example, look at Bitcoin. What was once a libertarian's dream has already been co-opted by the same VCs and interests such that they will now provide the services and "real infrastructure" to grow wealthy from what was once considered an almost subversive concept. Business as usual. >majority of humans just doesn't give a crap about anything that's further than 10cm from the end of their noses That's true, but I think that's due to the quite purposeful orientation of our society towards mass distraction, which seems to be part of an apparent desire to limit critical thought. Witness the U.S. education system which emphasizes rote-memorization and the creation of "cogs for the machine". I actually think it's endemic to the wealth/income polarization problem. That is, such a societal structure that seeks to create a consumer class that serves as mere unthinking cogs works to someone's benefit. >Just look at internal politics of every democratic state I'm not sure how many truly democratic states there are. The "shining example" (US) is controlled by a relative few people through special interests, insane campaign funding laws, and revolving-door civil-servants/lobbyists. Again, all of these examples point back to the very discomfort I have: the increasing concentration of power and wealth away from "the masses" into the hands of a few whose agenda and priorities shape our world.
- humannature 13y agowhen are we going to start addressing the problem of overpopulation?
- namenotrequired 13y agoThere's a lot of non-profits that aim to make birth control more wide-spread, too. Do you have any other ideas how overpopulation can be tackled by a startup with purely legal methods?
- jacalata 13y agoI believe that decreased child mortality and increased education/self-sufficiency for women are two of the big triggers for reduced birth rates in developing countries; in other words, increase the chances that the kids they have will survive to support their parents, and decrease the need for mothers to be supported by their children/possibly increase the opportunity cost to them of having children (although I don't think I've heard it described in that last way, it's just how it looks to me).
- namenotrequired 13y agoGood points, thanks! I now see that Bill and Melinda Gates addressed the same points in their annual letter: http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=myth-three http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=myth-three
- coreymgilmore 13y agogreat job guys, keep up the good work. cant wait to see what comes of it.
- alt_f4 13y agoFinally an answer to the question: "What do I have to do to get into YCombinator? Cure aids?"