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More on Garage Biotechnology From h+ Magazine
(Wednesday January 27 2010)
 | Another good article from h+ Magazine is illustrative of the present state of the art in the DIY Bio scene: "In September 2007, I gave a short talk at Aubrey de Grey's SENS conference in Cambridge outlining my intention to found an open source biotech company that would make customized therapies for breast cancer. The response to the presentation was predictable: many had concerns whether regulators would allow such a drug to be used in a human trial. I had no idea, but I knew the only way to truly find out would be to try. It took almost two years of discussion and feeling my way around, but this company now exists. It‘s called the Pink Army Cooperative. ... Breast cancer is the first target, but ultimately the cooperative's goal is to open a path from diagnostics to the clinic for individualized medicines - to make effective cancer treatments as fast as diagnostic data can be translated into designs, manufactured, tested in the lab, and approved for use on a single person. Using open source synthetic biology, each of these steps can be automated, and each should get cheaper over time. ... Pink Army, then, is the first DIY drug company. It's a container that allows people interested in tackling cancer to connect and focus their passion, skills, and other resources." |
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