Matthew Halma

• PhD Student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Dear all,

I hope this doesn't come across as a naïve question, but in the laboratory, we use DMSO to dissolve flavonoids and other compounds which don't dissolve well in water.

I am aware for a few of these supplements, such as resveratrol, bioavailability is a challenge. Given that solubility is related to bioavailability (at least for the case of drugs absorbed in GI fluids), is dissolving formulations in DMSO a potential way to increase their bioavailability? It is my understanding that there are some risks to DMSO use, but it has a history of use in humans for interstitial cystitis.

Thank you,

Matthew

Dear readers,

Thanks for your attention. I am wondering about the health economic problem of quantifying the value of interventions which a) prevent, b) improve symptom profile and c) ultimately reverse (i.e. cure) diseases.

As a rough number if a preventative measure reduces incidence of a disease by 10%, I can calculate savings by multiplying this by the total direct and indirect costs of the disease.

However, for conditions where the intervention exerts a partial improvement in symptom profile (not total reversal), the calculation of savings can be more difficult. What I was thinking is using absolute changes in an accepted scale. Such as the HAMD scale for depression, which defines cutoffs as:

no depression (0-7); mild depression (8-16); moderate depression (17-23); and severe depression (≥24).

Max value: 52

From other information, I have found that depression for a single patient brings costs of $11446 per patient (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5798200/). Assuming spending per patient scales linearly with severity, and goes to zero at clinical remission.

Of course the figure is an average, so one would in principle find the distribution of HAMD scores for diagnosed patients to find where the 'average' patient lies in terms of severity. Even more preferable, you would have expenditure-severity data for multiple individuals, but we have to extrapolate otherwise. Roughly, I'll put the $11446 as the cost per patient with a severity of someone in the middle of the scale, which is roughly 14 on the scale .

If that is the case, one point is roughly (and this is very rough) would be $11446/14 or $820. It's probably less as the value 14 is probably too low, but somewhere in this range.

I am wondering if there is a better methodology to estimate the value of interventions which improve symptoms? Or if this approach is acceptable.

Dear all,

I am seeking to build a resource linking diseases with bioactive compounds, and include source (plant species) and range information as well. To make sure that I am not reinventing the wheel, do you know of something that exists like this already?

Currently, the missing step would be a database of drug-disease associations, ideally ones that have a high degree of validation. I'm aware that there are DBs based on literature co-occurence but I don't know how strong these associations are and I believe it will be a lot of false positives.

I would prefer a smaller database of clinically validated associations only.

Many thanks and much appreciation,

Matt

I am wondering about publishing a protocol for an interventional, prospective trial, but I am unsure about funding the trial. On one hand, I believe publishing a study protocol generates interest, on the other hand, I am not sure if there will be funding or participation from the relevant clinics.

I have been doing feasibility studies on the use of microbial biostimulants in agriculture. Compared to conventional fertilizers, they have many advantages, they require a much smaller application and if they can help with increasing yield, a small application can provide a large value proposition.

My question is, if biostimulants are used in a real world agricultural setting, what increases in yield could one see with optimistic assumptions (assuming the choice of crop and associated biostimulant are matched, etc) while being reasonable.

Thank you !

Dear all,

I am having difficulty finding useful numbers on transport infrastructure, I wish to investigate quality changes over time, so such statistics on the percentage of trains/busses/trams that arrive on time or some measure on the quality of the road.

I am aware of some sources, such as the 'Infrastructure Report Card' in the USA, reports by consultancies or the congressional budget office. However, these are not scholarly sources and I would prefer to avoid them.

So the question is: are you aware of longitudinal studies of transport infrastructure and service quality?

Thank you!

Hello, first I shall share that I do not have a lot of familiarity with this topic so excuse my ignorance if there is any.

We know that anti-drug antibodies exist, with some against small molecule drugs, usually these are haptens bound to some proteins.

At some level of structural complexity, it becomes difficult to produce an antibody that is selective enough to target the specific antigen without off target effects.

My question is this.

1) What is the simplest structure which antibodies can be formed against? i.e. what is found experimentally?

2) Is there some sort of theoretically imposed lower bound on the informational complexity of an antigen against which antibodies can form.

I should mention that I am aware of riboswitches and their ability to recognize individual ions and discriminate them from other ions, even with identical charge.

Especially one with a negative connotation

Dear all,

I am wondering what the state of the art is for detecting m1Ψ in RNA sequences and how it can be differentiated from U. I am thinking of just using RNA-seq and then a separate assay to determine m1Ψ concentration, but ideally I would like to know if an individual base is m1Ψ or U.

Thank you!

Dear all,

I am wondering if there is an easy data format to share the composition of a biochemical solution, for example a buffer consisting of certain concentrations of different substances, as well as some biologically active molecules (peptides, oligonucleotides, proteins, etc). Preferably the latter would have links to their accession numbers in different databases, or if that is not available, a FASTA sequence. I am seeking to improve the re-usability of data within the single molecule field.

Thank you!