[untilHellbanned]

Kudos to your efforts to help cancer patients and their families.

1) These types of experiments have long been go on in labs all around the world. Why did YC think your approach was unique? Why didn't they just fund one of the dozens of academic/industry labs in e.g., Boston, already doing the same?

2) Many people have doubts about the utility of the results obtained from treatments on ex vivo tumor cells relating to the in vivo situation. Was YC aware of this?

I'm all for YC going into new areas, but those two points above make me concerned that they are considerably out of their leagues when it comes to the biomedical sciences.

[M_NotableLabs]

Thanks!

1. There are indeed similar efforts in academic labs around the world. The constraint they face is lack of funding to expand their experiments beyond testing drugs on their small sized tumor banks.

Industry labs don't generally have access to primary (from patients) tumors so they have to partner with academics or contract research organizations (CROs). No one institution or CRO has a Glioblastoma tumor bank beyond around 100 patient samples.

These smaller tumor banks don't capture the heterogeniety of the patient population as a whole, so one of the advantages of being a company not tied to an institution is the ability to develop a substantially larger tumor bank that accomplishes this. We accomplish this by acquiring primary tissue through our testing service around the world.

Academics also often rely on standardized assay conditions and commercially available cell lines because their major incentive is to publish their results. Standard methods and cell lines are often preferred by reviewers and working with primary lines is difficult and expensive. Translation to response in patients isn't the primary objective of the screens.

2. Yes, Elizabeth Iorns, a former cancer biologist and the CEO of Science Exchange, is one of the part time YC partners.

[neurotech1]

My thoughts;

1) There is a large amount of "guesswork" on the part of oncologists. I can well imagine YC would fund a startup that provides more data.

2) That is a valid point, although it may be that this technology may reduce the use of ineffective combinations, as much as find more effective ones.

Disclaimer: I'm not physician etc. and this isn't medical advice.