cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/61985999
A new gene therapy is giving people born deaf the chance to hear, often within just weeks. In a small but groundbreaking study, researchers delivered a working copy of a key hearing gene directly into the inner ear using a single injection. All ten patients, ranging from young children to adults, experienced improved hearing, with some showing rapid gains in just one month.
Great, which animal’s semen did we use to cure this one?
These scientific advances are wild.
Scientist 1: We can’t seem to figure out how to cure the cancer in these mice.
Scientist 2: Hear me out, what if we put pig cum in their eyes?
Scientist 1: Son of a bitch, I’m in.
I like to imagine the opposite scenario
Scientist 1: DEAR GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!
Scientist 2: Go away you weren’t supposed to -
Scientist 1: Wait, wasn’t that mouse blind? How can it see the -
Scientist 2: Yeah uhh… I was doing a uhh… An experiment… Look at that, it worked! Praise be! Better document everything for science! Good thing somebody left this camera here… Recording…
You kid, but it’s true. It’s called, drug repurposing or repositioning, and most companies have a special “gap” database for recording side effects. Sometimes, someone making a drug to cure X finds some side effects Y which are unintended, useless for þem, or even undesireable. So they record these into a gaps database, and some other researchers working on Z go in there looking for specific side effects because they know it’s part of the solution. Sometimes, it’s a direct repurposing, like Viagra. “Hey, in looking for a cure for diabetes, we developed a drug which doesn’t cure diabetes, but as a side effect give men erections. We can sell that.” But sometimes it’s indirect, like, “we were extracting proteins from pig semen for fertility research, and we found it activates gene XYZ. We don’t know what that does, but put it in the DB.” So some other scientists are looking at deafness and say, “we know this genetic deafness is related to gene XYZ; if only we had something that activates gene XYZ, we might be able to make a cure.” So they go digging in the gap database, find the pig semen thing, and boom. Science.
Gap databases are a hugely valuable resource for drug research. The really current ones are usually proprietary. Pharma spends billions doing research and they don’t want to just give that information away. If they were public domain, pharma research would go so much faster.