Scientists are too often forced to tackle next-generation problems with last generation’s tools.
We built MegaMap to give scientists the superpowers that lay at the intersection of human intuition and machine learning.
Play w/ it:
Replace “car” w/ “glucose” and the variables w/ “insulin taken, food gobbled, exercise, recent insulin sensitivity, absorption curves, …” and you have the open source automated pancreas app I use:
It’s life-changing. Humans need help w/ complex systems.
Something I wish existed: a mobile app that dynamically calculates the probability you're about to crash your car, based on your speed, the history of the piece of road you're on, the weather, the time of day, accelerometer data, etc.
The first of many milestones we'll be sharing over the coming months.
Spring's Series B, led by
@generalcatalyst
and
@eladgil
, w/ strong support from existing investors + many new.
Plus some incredible new execs steering us into the clinic and multiple BD deals.
I get to work every day w/ a team of experts that teach me constantly. On an insanely hard problem w/ the potential to dramatically REDUCE DISEASE. Supported by a rare group of visionary funders.
Spring is building something special. Join us!
1/ Proud to announce our team, funding, and ambitious mission
@SpringDiscovery
— we're fighting back against the diseases of old age by accelerating the discovery of anti-aging therapies:
(paywall)
How good we have it when we are healthy.
I’ve always felt lucky that type 1 diabetes has kept me aware of mortality. Appreciative of time.
I hope a deep, calm swell of appreciation fills our chests for a long time when we make it through this difficult moment together.
We’ve spent years quietly building a discovery engine
@springdiscovery
that gives scientists fighting aging the tools they deserve.
Feels good to be sharing more of our tech publicly —
3-year old just sent me on a frantic password cycling freakout.
Was sure I was hacked when I saw this.
Turns out she switched from Khan Academy Kids to Twitter on my iPad, then dropped a ridiculously appropriate tweet
Spring Discovery secures exclusive license to IP from Boston Children's Hospital related to small molecule inhibitors of highly inflammatory programmed cell death processes
Trying to decide if it’s worth it for
@springdiscovery
to be the flag-bearer fighting for acceptance of emojis in drug codenames.
Pharma world expects “SPR-1032” but how cute is “SPR-🐙🐵”
Scientists should step into the lab and feel like batman walking into the bat cave. Surrounded by the best R&D tools at the ready.
Spring gives scientists superpowers.
@mattkrisiloff
Spring speeds up the search for therapies for aging and its diseases.
A team of machine learning and biology folks, together building better tools and advancing drugs.
Hiring immunologists, cell biologists, high throughput pros, lab manager, ...
Announcing: On Deck Longevity Biotech (ODLB) 🧬
Decades of research have shown that aging is a malleable and reversible process. The constraint for progress has been a lack of founders.
Today we’re helping builders navigate this dynamic vertical.
Very excited to be working w/ Harry Kleanthous's expert team in this space.
Vaccines are one of our most powerful weapons against disease, and systematically understanding how to improve immune response is a huge challenge tightly related to loss of immune function as we age.
Today we announced a collaboration w/ Gates Foundation to discover and characterize novel vaccine adjuvants using Spring's ML-powered engine.
We're excited to deploy Spring's tech to systematize our understanding of adjuvants and immune response.
More:
Many ask why medicine is not progressing faster. I go through biology history, argue against the talent/not enough math theory, conclude it's a lot due to slow feedback loops & why we need to make clinical trials faster.
Excerpts:
"A version of the
@Harjeet
We always wanted to make something like this work in early days at KA. It was very polarizing — some “get it” and love it, others hated it. Gets complex, needs very rich and well designed google maps-like features to scale properly. We never nailed it.
“I’m a true believer that people, they don’t really know their limits,” Mr. Bourla said in an interview. “And usually, they have the tendency to underestimate what they can produce.”
Many of my values and most of my luck can be traced back to working
@FogCreek
in early days.
Feel responsible to deliver on all I was given. Grateful to be among this crew:
So true. Spend so much time on this when giving offers. Shocked at how mistreated many scientists are w/r/t classic bio equity, and the lack of information given to them to even realize it
Boston biotech employees need more education around what equity is and how to value it. The historical lack of founder-executives has led to a complete disregard for cap table discipline, and as such, scientists devalue the upside of the equity.
Founder-led startups can fix this
“Should we fight back against aging?”
Firmly believe people’s moral intuition about this question would align *instantly* if a therapy existed today that helped people live healthily to 150.
Maybe
@celinehalioua
and
@loyalfordogs
can quickly disabuse us of this annoying debate
@waitbutwhy
The precision of our biological clock across trillions of cells is incredible. One never sees someone with an old left arm, but a young right arm.
Aging can obviously be fixed. The real question is whether it should be.
“If our bodies were commercial aircraft, this would be akin to skipping maintenance and waiting until the engine is on fire at 35,000 feet before you take action.”
“People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.”
Too many great quotes to choose from:
@generalcatalyst
@eladgil
We're both building cutting-edge tech to help scientists discover/develop therapies for diseases of aging while advancing a pipeline of drugs.
I can think of no more impactful way to fight disease.
Deeply thankful of the supporters who let us tackle such an ambitious mission.
8/ Our team + our tools form a machine that shows promise for profiling the aging immune system and screening compounds to rejuvenate it.
Dive into today’s preprint or read on.
We screened thousands of drugs...
When we started
@springdiscovery
, I thought my work (aging) and my disease (type 1 diabetes) were completely different beasts.
3 years later I’m nearly convinced that many of T1D’s consequences mirror accelerated aging.
Trying to decide if it’s worth it for
@springdiscovery
to be the flag-bearer fighting for acceptance of emojis in drug codenames.
Pharma world expects “SPR-1032” but how cute is “SPR-🐙🐵”
I don't like disease. I don't like anybody suffering from disease.
It's unsettling to me how cavalier people can be, mocking someone getting ill. It's unsettling that many will read this as political in some way and tell me why, in this case, it's good.
A while back
@andy_matuschak
told me that most disagreements boil down to two parties having different Buxton indexes.
“...close co-operation b/w entities w/ very different Buxton Indices invariably fails and leads to moral complaints about the partner.”
@kendraffe
Get a doula to advocate for you in the delivery room. Your loved ones, while well-meaning, likely won’t know what to ask for/what you might need.
Fun w/ all-hands "onsites" while
@SpringDiscovery
is remote.
Pluto (
@eladgil
's project) gives events like trivia night a quirky feel — teams can split up to different areas to talk privately. Host can present on a screen or walk around and taunt the groups😂. A blast.