Item — HN Reader

From their FAQ (at the page bottom):

### If this vaccine candidate is so promising, why can’t you get enough funds for it from government and foundation grants?

We’ve spoken to many parties and some seem interested, but do not believe this is the best route for us at this time. The landscape is highly political, and most bodies are focused on creating a neutralizing antibody vaccine. Anytime a product completely novel and innovative enters this space, it is extremely difficult to obtain early adopter. Given the extreme toll HIV/AIDs is taking on many communities around the world, we must move swiftly. We are confident these groups will come around down the road, but we do not want to wait.

5 comments

Wow that is quite a statement. If this project succeeds, people should really reconsider the whole way science funding works nowadays.

Assuming that statement is in any way true.

It's actually surprisingly accurate. This part in particular " Anytime a product completely novel and innovative enters this space, it is extremely difficult to obtain early adopter. " Bringing a drug to market is a massive undertaking and most Biotech Investors look at novel treatments as way to high of a risk.

Genentech asked Kleiner Perkins for a $3.0 million dollar investment back in the 70s to see if it was even possible to accomplish genome splicing. The investment would have paid for building a new lab, new equipment, etc. KP decided to give them $500k and rent the UCLA lab instead. That was a groundbreaking investment (and the VC business had only been around for 15-20 years).

In the current landscape of investing, crowdfunding has become the vehicle for riskier investments that traditional VCs no longer make (because they don't fit 10% x $2 billion = happy LPs) and I'm sure KP knows firsthand about dealing with bio-pharma regulations.

Hats off to Immunity and YC.

Government grants go to all sorts of things that have a <10% chance of panning out big, though. That's the point of public funding for basic research (something some of its critics don't get).

>but do not believe this is the best route for us at this time.

It might not be the best route because while it will provide individual immunity, HIV transmission can and likely will still happen. The worst case seems to be everyone gets HIV but everyone is a controller.

(Btw, the FAQ seems to have changed since that quote: http://www.immunityproject.org/faq)

That remains to be determined; with sufficient control transmission is less likely to occur. From:http://ragoninstitute.org/hivcontrollers/patients/about/

  Studies have also shown that people with higher viral loads are more likely to transmit HIV to others. Lower levels of virus are thus beneficial to the individual, because they predict longer AIDS-free survival, and to overall public health, because they may reduce the rate of transmission. Some HIV controllers are able to maintain levels of virus that are so low that they are termed “undetectable,” these individuals have been described in the literature as elite controllers or elite suppressors.

HIV is already non-fatal due to antiretroviral therapies. So, this vaccine won't necessarily result in an increase in the number of HIV+ people (who are alive). But even if it does, I still believe it's better than no vaccine at all. Curing HIV (as in, eliminating it completely) from a controller is no harder than curing it in a non-controller. Right now both are impossible, but that may change.

I don't understand the meaning of "Anytime a product completely novel and innovative enters this space, it is extremely difficult to obtain early adopter"

Are they saying they can't get access to patients for clinical trials? Sick people probably wouldn't like being called "early adopters".

It's hard to believe a group such as the Gates Foundation would think this way given the stakes.

this is exactly the sentiment that I have for my (biomedical) nonprofit.