hentrep

How can I hear more when it’s ready?

Disclaimer: I’ve spent my career across oncology R&D and commercial roles, but have never worked on oncolytic viruses.

Title is misleading - this is a first in human, safety/dose-escalation study for this particular oncolytic virus. Oncolytic viruses have been in clinical development for quite some time. In response to the predictable “let us know when it works in humans” responses we see following sensationalist clinical research headlines, in 2015 we actually saw an oncolytic virus approved in the US: T-VEC for inoperable melanoma [0]

A few interesting things here from my point of view. First, they’re engineering the virus to infect cancer cells and overexpress PD-L1 to prime for enhanced immune-mediated killing. This could help a “cold” tumor turn “hot” by remodeling the tumor microenvironment. Second, the virus will also overexpress a symporter in the cancer cells which allows for targeted imaging and monitoring of tumor activity and cell death. There’s a nice graphical abstract available for reference [1]

Importantly, they’re assessing this in TNBC as it is associated with a very poor prognosis and has been validated as responsive to anti-PD-1 immunotherapies (eg, Keytruda/pembrolizumab)[2]

For the curious, there’s a preclinical Nature paper from June 2021 describing this in pancreatic cancer cells [3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talimogene_laherparepvec

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35118191/

[2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1910549

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41417-021-00350-4

The original Science manuscript is locked behind a paywall, but high-level context and conclusions are provided here:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl9283?cookieSe...

If you’re in the US, have you found a wireless provider that meets your criteria?

Would love to hear more about how you got started. Any blog posts documenting this?

Assuming this one-sided story to be true, let this serve as yet another reminder that Human Resources is designed to protect the employer - not the employee. The cynic in me would go so far as to say one should generally avoid reporting anything to HR at all costs. It almost never works out the way one would hope.

When the option to provide a cover letter exists, I usually share a PDF “pitch deck” that showcases my value proposition. This typically includes a tailored visualization of my experience and skillset, a competitive overview, strategic business analysis/SWOT, 30-60-90 day plan, etc. Of course this takes some time to develop, but I’m often doing the supporting research as part of my planned interview prep anyway. This approach has yielded a 100% response rate with hiring managers over the past 5 or so years, but I’m outside of the usual HN crowd where talent demand isn’t as high (commercial pharma). I also believe this method has directly led to more attractive compensation packages.

The PDF is not overwhelming - 7 or so slides max with a focus on visualizations over heavy text. It is worth the extra effort if you’re passionate about a specific role or organization.

Unless I’m misinterpreting the article, this isn’t banning leaf blowers in general - only those which are gas powered. Electric leaf blowers still carry the annoyance you’ve mentioned.

Can we get a correction on this headline, or consider using the primary source [0]? The current title is inaccurate - clinicaltrials.gov reports 5 active studies with BioNTech‘a mRNA vaccine, BNT122 [1]. First-in-human solid tumor data was reported by Braiteh et al at AACR last year [2].

The headline should read: “First patient dosed in Phase II trial of mRNA-based vaccine for colorectal cancer.”

[0] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=RO7198457&...

[2] https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/80/16_Supplement/...

I've wondered about the legality of the spikes I see on semi trucks in the US. I can't imagine these spikes veering into the rubber of another vehicle's tires would end well. Though based on some cursory searches, it seems many of these spikes are made of plastic [0]

[0] https://bigrigpros.com/why-do-semi-trucks-have-spikes-on-whe...

Others have mentioned GrapheneOS as an alternative. Recent Graphene builds include sandboxed Google Play compatibility layers [0]

[0] https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-play-services

Title is reflective of the linked tweet. Link to the manuscript: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.10.451761v1

Radiolab did an incredible story on the history of rapamycin. Highly encourage everyone to give it a listen!

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dirty...

This is really neat. Love how you’ve segmented separate portfolios based on risk/investment hypotheses. Thanks for sharing!

Is data privacy not a valid reason?

Episode 211 of The Privacy Security & OSINT podcast did a pretty thorough analysis of the data collected by Plaid. Highly recommend a listen: https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2021/03/26/the-privacy-secu...

The DNR has actually changed tune on this recently: https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan/2020/08/12/mich...

Does the MagSafe feature run the risk of demagnetizing credit cards and hotel keys?

Lots of conversation on the cost of US healthcare seems hyper-focused on prescription drug prices. A report released last week seems to contradict the notion that prescription drug prices are the culprit. Yes, prescription drugs cost more in the US than the rest of the world, but the real burden on healthcare seems related to administrative costs. [0]

Per an analysis of the report [1]:

“The U.S. spent $10,637 per capita on health care in 2018. Comparable countries spent $5,527.

The overwhelming majority of the difference — 76% of it — came from spending on inpatient and outpatient care — not drugs, which get more attention but represent just 10% of the difference.“

As someone who works in the pharmaceutical industry, I’ll be the first to admit that the financial toxicity associated with prescription drugs is a very real concern. To be absolutely clear, there is opportunity to reduce the cost for many prescription drugs without hobbling innovation. But perhaps the conversation would be better served by focusing on the larger system that allow healthcare costs to flourish unchecked? Should we not also be outraged when a single hospital-provided band-aid costs $7.00 (~20X markup)? [2] Price gouging is rampant across the board.

[0] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/what-drives-health...

[1] https://www.axios.com/drugs-arent-the-reason-the-us-spends-s...

[2] https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-16/curious-case-629-er-b...

Would there not be value in pre-screening patients for SCN9A mutations to predict an increased risk of pain killer addiction? Socioeconomic factors play as role as well, but it doesn't to be so black and white.

My initial thought was that the bitcoin move was a red herring. DMs associated with the compromised accounts could be very well worth much more than $100k.

Off topic, but the linked WFLA video highlights how factual reporting takes a backseat to an insidious "breaking news", headlines-first approach. Twice we hear Mr. Buinno misstate the Twitter attack as occurring "a few months ago" before being corrected by his colleague after the second instance. I realize this is a trivial criticism, but it makes one question their general preparation and fact-checking processes. Is it too much to expect alignment on the basic details of a story before broadcasting it to hundreds of thousands of people?

As noted in the article, the headline is misleading.

The population obviously hasn't quadrupled since Yosemite closed to visitors on March 20th. It is remarkable though to see how quickly wildlife is willing to re-enter areas that have historically been overrun with humans!

If you’re willing to share, I’d love to see photos! This sounds very much aligned with permaculture philosophies (which can be extrapolated to areas of life beyond food production) [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

While greatly overshadowed by the nuclear arms race, the US and Soviet biowarfare programs during the Cold War were absolutely terrifying. Many Soviet bioweapons scientists defected to the US toward the end of the Cold War. One of those scientists — Ken Alibekov — shared his experiences in a thrilling autobiography called Biohazard [0]. According to Ken’s claim in the book, he actually uncovered the Sverdlovsk anthrax incident through an epidemiological research project while in medical school. While it’s likely many of the stories in Biohazard were embellished or altogether fabricated (vested interests in promoting biowarfare threats), anecdotes from US scientists working at USAMRIID at the time support many of the Soviet claims. It’s interesting to ponder how differently the world might have turned if both sides had access to our modern understanding of genetics, precise editing tools, and inexpensive sequencing. Biowarfare is insidious for other reasons as well: lack of damage on physical infrastructure, relatively low development costs, ability to mimic a natural pandemic, and potential for mass transmission to name a few. And perhaps that latter one is a saving grace — the possibility of losing control over a biological weapon makes it a very risky asset indeed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohazard_(book)

Just a heads-up that you’ve listed MI twice here.

Can anyone attest to how accurate this transcription is for technical subjects? I've attempted to integrate transcription into my work life (pharma), but correcting errors related to tech jargon or acronyms/abbreviations always outweighed any benefit.

Also interesting are the Blythe Intaglios along the California/Arizona border: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blythe_Intaglios

Neat 3 year time lapse video from the University of Queensland: https://youtu.be/BZvsrOciU_Q

And relevant Radiolab episode here: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/267176-never-quite-now

Can you link to some of your favorites?