Topic: Would you invest in an ICO developing novel biomedical research? - page 2. (Read 498 times)

The goals are truly admirable and I love that crypto has reach to almost every kind of field. I hope to see great things come out of the project, best of luck!

Actually, in order to reach the same level of data integrity protection with a centralized database, we would need to have enough computational power to match the entire Etherum blockchain. Neeedless to say that this would be hardly economically feasible. In addition, I would not exactly call addressing a major global public health issue such as HIV infection getting some funding for nothing.

Dear cryptikco, thank you very much for your question regarding fund distribution. Really appreciated as we will also include this additional information in the whitepaper. We actually plan to allocate roughly 45% of the budget toward the "You're not alone" application, which includes not just software development but also all associated costs such as marketing, ecosystem development, app maintenance, and 55% of the funds toward our AIDS cure research. Our AIDS cure development includes preclinical animal research, and phase 1, 2, 3 human trials.

However, I believe you may have assumed we will develop our own blockchain for the application as you are saying funds would go toward blockchain development. Am I correct? In such a case, that is a wrong assumption. We plan to use the Etherum blockchain and store data in smart contracts.



Debetable. It all depends on your estimated RPM, which in turn is highly variable and depends on many factors such as traffic, CRT (click-through-rate), CPC (cost per click). Average RPM can be as low as 0.5$ for broad niches or as high as 100$ for competitive niches. For instance, with a very narrow nice such as the HIV seropositve community, we estimated ads from pharmaceutical corporations selling popular HIV related producs (e.g., PrEP medications used for a seronegative partner) corresponding to an average RPM of 66$, which with 25k visits/day would generate roughly 50k$/month. The key here is that we aim to have a highly targeted audience resulting in greater relevancy and therefore RPM. However, I understand where you are coming from, and we will explain more clearly in the whitepaper how we estimated ad revenue. In additon, you may have missed that the whitepaper also assumes revenues generated by our HIV therapy, which could generate several billions/year in revenue once approved and commercially available.


Well, not using funds for developing our AIDS cure solution would defeat one of the main purposes of the application; from the whitepaper:


"Now, let’s explain why we named the application “You’re not alone”. The application will also document the progress of our AIDS cure research project, featuring periodic updates such as articles, vlogs. This will create a community where HIV seropositive people can stay up to the date, comment, share, interact with us working on the cure, and with each others. Something that creates a bridge between HIV seropositive people and us research scientists working on the cure. Something that allows the HIV seropositive community and anyone interested to be part of this journey. Something that can send the message that they are not alone in their battle. That we are fighting for them. That we care about them. A message of hope. Our vision and intention is therefore to create an application that will also act as a social app for HIV seropositive people to participate and create new topics and discussions to support each others and stand together in the fight against AIDS. Discussions will be moderated by a team of moderators, and qualified physicians will also be hired to participate in the community for providing expert medical advice as a free service to the users.

The application will also provide information about all the ongoing clinical trials, how to participate, and once our HIV treatment is approved, it will provide information about the clinics and hospitals offering the treatment, and how to make appointments with legit clinicians that are officially collaborating with us, to offer the best services and rates."


If we are not developing our AIDS cure solution with the funds raised by the project, which would help speed up tremendously its development, why would the HIV seropositive community be interested in downloading our app? Just to use it as a mobile forum? There are hundreds already. It would be extremely unlikely to expect to have a growing community with million subscribers whithout offering substantial and frequent updates from the development of our AIDS cure serearch. And we can do this succesfully only if we use funds to develop the research. Moreover, without producing results from human trials soon, we would have no data to insert into the database, and the application would also have no use for us as well. It is extremely unlikely that we can support the development of our AIDS cure research only through the revenue generated by the app, and it would be unethical to make such a promise to the millions of people that are suffering from this terrible disease and are in urgent need of an AIDS cure.

Why wouldnt i ? if the project has shown good potentials in the market ? if the proeject will give us a good product/services in the future or if it has a good vision and advisors,good development team that are capable of developing the project? why not? i am too picky with these ICOs that is why i aint going to investd into something that i am not really familiar of.

Did you read the whitepaper or the previous posts?  Having clinical trial data on the blockchain is one of the most important features.  The fact that data and results cannot be tampered with (have you ever heard of Theranos?) is huge.

this does definately not seem like it needs to exist on the blockchain, just want to get some funding for nothing? 

Why not? if the idea is good and it really needs the blockchain technology i would invest but if the team doesnt have good credibility or experience i wont because a good project with the right product and vision wont succeed if the team doesnt have any good experience,advisors are important to that is why we need to take a look to the whole ICO instead looking in few aspects.

My only concern so far is that you are saying that the ICO revenue will go towards developing the blockchain/application and also continuing your research of SupT1 cell infusion.  You have not divulged information about how you plan to allocate the funds between all three projects.  I realize that the whitepaper assumes incoming ad revenue, but the number feels off by orders of magnitude.  I am surprised that you think 25k-50k visits per day equates to 50k-100k USD per month.

I still find this project very interesting, but I do not think I would participate in the ICO unless all funds go towards development of the blockchain and application, and a more convincing argument about the ad revenue is presented.  The ad revenue could be split between the projects and help to fund further research.

I'll read up on your project -- this sounds exactly like what I had in mind (not to do myself, but wondering if anyone else has done or will do it), so I'm very interested in it.

This is our mission. We believe that this is what the blockchain should be about. About changing the lives of millions of people all over the world. And we believe in the potential of the blockchain to serve the scientific community. Behind our project there are many years of hard work and investments to perform and publish our research. This project is therefore based on something solid and concrete, and it's a long term project that does not involve just the application itself, but our biomedical research as well.

For those who are interested in the science behind our project, here is an overwier of SupT1 cell infusion therapy, our novel cell-based therapy solution for HIV


HIV infection usually leads to a progressive decline in number and functionality of CD4+ T lymphocytes, resulting in AIDS development. As explained in Jonathan Fior’s papers [1–3], the HIV virus has a higher tropism for SupT1 cells than for primary CD4+ T cells. Several hypotheses have been proposed as an explanation, most notably the higher surface expression of CD4 and CXCR4 receptors in SupT1 cells. In addition, in vitro studies of HIV evolution show that persistent growth in the SupT1 cell line results in a less cytopathic virus with a reduced capacity for syncytium formation, a higher sensitivity to neutralization, improved replication in SupT1 cells and impaired infection of primary CD4+ T cells [4–6]. Accordingly, Jonathan Fior proposed the infusion of irradiated SupT1 cells as a cell-based HIV therapy to exploit the therapeutic potential of these phenomena [1–3]. The rationale behind this approach is that moving infection toward the inoculated cells should prevent infection and depletion of the patient’s own CD4+ T cells and, therefore, AIDS. In such a strategy, SupT1 cells would act as a “decoy target” for the HIV virus to prevent CD4+ T cell depletion as well as to render the virus less cytopathic. As previously mentioned, in vitro studies of HIV evolution show that prolonged replication in SupT1 cells renders the virus less cytopathic and more sensitive to neutralization. Accordingly, replication of the virus in the inoculated SupT1 cells should also have a vaccination effect; that is, the therapy should also induce the virus to become progressively less aggressive and harmful for the patient. The use of SupT1 cells as a decoy target for HIV has been investigated in vitro and in vivo, with interesting results [1,3]. In vitro data showed that, when primary CD4+ T cells are infected with HIV in the presence of SupT1 cells, the preferential infection of SupT1 cells can spare primary CD4+ T cells from infection and depletion. In vivo data in humanized mice showed that significantly lower viral replication (~10-fold) and potentially preserved CD4+ T cell frequency at Week 1 was scored in animals treated with SupT1 cell infusion. Of note, one animal exhibited a sustained decrease in HIV replication and CD4+ T cell depletion (no virus detected anymore at Weeks 3 and 4), a result that may hold the key to future HIV treatments. Given the urgent and global need for a cost effective cure for HIV, we believe that the millions of people infected by this terrible disease deserve highly innovative HIV cure research strategies, such as SupT1 cell infusion therapy.


In summary, these are some of the potential therapeutic benefits of this cell-based treatment that go beyond what can be achievable with traditional antiretroviral therapy (cART):


1)The vaccination effect. As previously mentioned, SupT1 cells have been shown to have a very powerful vaccination effect in vitro [4–6]. In this regard, in vitro studies of HIV evolution showed that upon prolonged replication in SupT1 cells, the X4 HIV-1 LAI virus evolves toward a less virulent phenotype with a reduced capacity for syncytium formation, thus losing the main cytopathic feature characterizing X4 strains, and most notably the virus adaptation to replicate in SupT1 cells results in gradually losing the ability to replicate in primary CD4+ T cells [4]. In addition, the variation to neutralization sensitivity after viral growth in tumor T cell lines has also been examined. Interestingly, one study reported that primary isolates that were initially resistant to neutralization acquired sensitivity to neutralization after continuous growth in tumor T cell lines, and that the sensitivity to neutralization progressively increased during the days of culturing [5]. Specifically, it was shown that after 14 days in continuous culture, 100 micrograms/mL of rsCD4 (recombinant soluble CD4) were needed to neutralize 1 TCID of primary isolate, while only 0.3 micrograms/mL of rsCD4 were needed to neutralize 1 TCID of the virus after 75 days in continuous culture. This means that there was a 300 fold increase in virus sensitivity to neutralization after prolonged replication in a tumor T cell line, which is really something remarkable. All these phenomena could therefore harbor a significant therapeutic potential that could be exploited with SupT1 cell infusion therapy to induce HIV infection to evolve into a more tractable state for therapy.

2)Potentially no organ toxicity; cART is a drug based treatment and as such is associated with organ toxicity because the drugs are metabolized by various organs. By contrast, SupT1 cell infusion is a cell-based treatment and there is no chemical substance injected into the body that needs to be metabolized, which could significantly improve the quality of the patient's life.

3)Be effective in patients in a terminal state of disease that developed drug resistant and very aggressive HIV strains. When a patient is treated with cART, the virus fights back because it strives to survive, which can result in the development of very aggressive and drug resistant HIV strains, especially in the terminal stage of the disease and in such cases cART becomes ineffective. By contrast, SupT1 cell infusion therapy provides the virus with a permissive cell-line in which it can preferentially replicate, so that a peaceful coexistence between virus and host becomes possible, which could dramatically improve the patient's health as the virus infection progressively moves toward the inoculated SupT1 cells and the virus becomes increasingly less pathogenic for its host.

 4)Possible association of the treatment with novel molecular compounds such as a Vif-inhibitor to act on HIV reservoirs. The HIV-1 Vif protein is essential for viral replication in primary CD4+ T cells but not in SupT1 cells [1]. Accordingly, pharmacologic inhibition of Vif could be combined with SupT1 cell infusion to further restrict viral replication to the inoculated SupT1 cells. Considering that APOBEC3G is expressed by different cell types, such as neuronal cells, astrocytes, and macrophages [2], pharmacologic inhibition of Vif may also have the benefit of acting on HIV reservoirs in the brain and other body areas. There are several molecules with promising anti-Vif activity currently being tested [2]. Similarly, other HIV-1 accessory proteins that are not essential for replication in SupT1 cells (e.g., Vpr, Vpu, and Nef [3]) may also be the target of pharmacologic inhibition. It is important to point out that these drugs would not affect virus replication in the inoculated SupT1 cells, and therefore in combination with SupT1 cell infusion therapy, there should not be development of drug resistance normally associated with drug based treatments.

​5)A cost effective AIDS cure solution. Our mission is to provide a cost effective cure solution for AIDS. In contrast with traditional cell-based and gene-based therapies that make use of modified autologous cells and are therefore very expensive and often unpractical for a large scale application, using a standardized T cell line such as the SupT1 cell line should significantly reduce the treatment costs associated with SupT1 cell infusion therapy, allowing access to the therapy where access to traditional HIV therapies is restricted by economic and social limitations. The social and economical impacts of a low cost HIV cure solution would be enormous.


Below some considerations with regard to potential issues:

 

1)Safety. We take this issue very seriously and are committed to performing very rigorous preclinical research to ensure there is enough data on safety to obtain approval from regulatory agencies for human experimentation. In this regard, injection of irradiated tumor cells as a therapy is already performed in cancer vaccination. In such cases, irradiating the cells prior to inoculation has been shown to ensure treatment safety both in animal and clinical studies [7]. We used the same protocol used in cancer vaccination studies (i.e., 30 Gy of radiation dose for the cells), which resulted in safe in vivo inoculation in our animal study as well [3]. Specifically, all animals successfully survived the treatment and presence of SupT1 cells was almost undetectable at late time points, which means that irradiating the cells prior to inoculation efficiently prevented SupT1 cell replication. Furthermore, we infused high doses of cells (40 million SupT1 cells were infused weekly), which in a highly immunodeficient mouse strain would rapidly lead to animal death in case of tumor development. Therefore, based on the clinical data we already have from cancer vaccination studies, and from the results of our first animal study, we believe that meeting the safety standards required for human trials is something feasible.


2)Rejection issues. Tumors can develop because tumor cells are able to evade immune recognition. For example, SupT1 cells do not express HLA-DR, which is an antigen highly associated with immune recognition [8]. Accordingly, given the tumoral nature of SupT1 cells, they should be significantly less immunogenic than normal cells and as such should survive in the patient long enough to provide a therapeutic effect. However, it is possible that the HIV virus will eradicate the cells faster and more efficiently than the immune system itself in any case.

References

1. Fior J. An initial in vitro investigation into the potential therapeutic use of SupT1 cells to prevent AIDS in HIV-seropositive individuals. PLoS ONE. 2012;7:13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22701517
2. Fior J. Is a pacific coexistence between virus and host the unexploited path that may lead to an HIV functional cure? Viruses. 2013;5:753–757. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23430684
3. Fior, J. SupT1 Cell Infusion as a Possible Cell-Based Therapy for HIV: Results from a Pilot Study in Hu-PBMC BRGS Mice. Vaccines. 2016, 4:13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27128948
4. Das, A.T.; Land, A.; Braakman, I.; Klaver, B.; Berkhout, B. HIV-1 evolves into a nonsyncytiuminducing virus upon prolonged culture in vitro. Virology. 1999, 263:55–69. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10544082
5. Turner, S.; Tizard, R.; DeMarinis, J.; Pepinsky, R.B.; Zullo, J.; Schooley, R.; Fisher, R. Resistance of primary isolates of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 to neutralization by soluble CD4 is not due to lower affinity with the viral envelope glycoprotein gp120. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 1992, 89:1335–1339. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1741386
6. Moore, J.P.; Burkly, L.C.; Connor, R.I.; Cao, Y.; Tizard, R.; Ho, D.D.; Fisher, R.A. Adaptation of two primary human immunodeficiency virus type 1 isolates to growth in transformed T cell lines correlates with alterations in the responses of their envelope glycoproteins to soluble CD4. AIDS Res. Hum. Retroviruses. 1993, 9:529–539. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8347397
7. Salgia R, et al. Vaccination with irradiated autologous tumor cells engineered to secrete granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor augments antitumor immunity in some patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung carcinoma. J. Clin. Oncol. 2003, 21:624–630. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12586798
8. Dufresne I, et al. Targeting lymph nodes with liposomes bearing anti-HLA-DR Fab′ fragments. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1999, 1421:284-94. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10518698

Any other question please feel free to ask.

Thank you for your comments. Glad to know there are people who actually spend time reading the whitepaper  We will also have a bounty campaign.

whitepaper was good and project looks very promising. I hope your project will be a success!

Thank you very much for the feedback. Much appreciated. We now updated the about page showing additional information.

Yeah, you need give more info. Because if you need spend many time time to find something - a small number of people can do it).

Hello, thank you very much for your enquiry.

You can find the whitepaper, which also has a section with the team members, on the pre-ico page of the website.

https://www.innovativebioresearch.com/pre-ico

However, let me give you some insight into how we operate.

For performing research, Jonathan Fior works as PI (principal investigator), conceiving the experiments and writing the experiment protocol. The work is then commissioned to a Contract Research Organization (CRO), which physically performs the experiments. Jonathan Fior then supervises all aspects related to the research communicating closely with the CRO. Once the experiments are completed, he analyzes the results and writes a scientific paper, which is published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. This means that although our team is not a large team, we actually have companies with 100+ people working for us. This way, we can keep a limited, yet strong and great, team. For instance, for our last study entitled "SupT1 Cell Infusion as a Possible Cell-Based Therapy for HIV: Results from a Pilot Study in Hu-PBMC BRGS Mice" we partnered with AXENIS, a state-of-the-art CRO company that is a spin-off from the renowned Institute Pasteur (Paris, France), as you can see from their website that has our study listed at the top in the bibliography section.

http://www.axenis.fr/bibliography/

Where is the team? Only 1 man listed here https://www.innovativebioresearch.com/about
Where is WhitePaper?

Thank you very much for your feedback With regard to the database itself, one may argue that the same result could be obtained with a more efficient centralized database. Although this may be true for other applications, there are some specific characteristics of the blockchain that make a decentralized database superior for the specific purpose of processing clinical data.

These are some of the potential advantages of using the blockchain technology for creating a decentralized database for clinical data

-Immutability. Scientific data need to be immutable. Once a study is peer reviewed and published, its data must be permanently stored and never altered. In the blockchain, all data is stored in every single node, never ceasing to exist, and always staying on the blockchain. It is immutability that gives the blockchain its openness and BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance).
-Decentralization. The blockchain is designed to be distributed and synchronized across networks, making data freely available to anyone. We believe that scientific data should be shared and not being hidden behind a firewall.
-Security. The kind of transactions that can be performed are strictly defined in advance and stored in the blockchain as “smart contracts”; this prevents fraudulent data from being added to the blockchain thus ensuring integrity of the database. By contrast, it would be much easier to compromise a centralized database.

Here are some of the potential drawbacks

-Transaction slowness. Bitcoin has a limit of 7 transactions per second, while Etherum has 15. This could be a limit for applications that may require thousands or even million database transactions per second. However, this would hardly be the case for a scientific database where data would be entered at a much slower pace, given that it can require several moths to years for a clinical study to be completed and new data to be produced.
-Data storage is primitive. The blockchain uses a rather primitive key-value database. However, although this could be a problem for applications storing complex databases, scientific data often consist of simple sets of alphanumeric data that could easily be stored in the blockchain by compressing and storing them in Hexadecimal format.

Interesting idea.
I will go to learn more about it.