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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6f9nyq wrote

Ya, but maybe it can move faster with ai. In silico clinical trials, and a bunch of other tech could shorten testing to months instead of years.

But you are certainly right, medicine does move slow as heck. I often wish it moved faster, even if that meant taking bigger risks.

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fj3fe wrote

AI is not going to speed up clinical trials.

You have to proceed slowly by design. Phase 1 need to prove safety at low doses and scale up slowly so you don't end up intoxicating patients.

And that's once you have recruited patients. Some trials die at patient recruitment. And most trials don't move to Phase 2, let alone 3.

And taking bigger risks only means killing people.

(I work on clinical stage biotech.)

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pre-DrChad t1_j6fltqk wrote

He did mention in silico trials so I’m guessing he means being able to simulate human clinical trials so we can make it move faster. Not even close to possible now since we can’t simulate a human but perhaps in the future

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fq3kx wrote

Like you say, such thing doesn't exist. Assessing how much impact AI will have in medicine by speculating about a fictional tool is going to devolve to assumptions on top of assumptions on top of assumptions.

And I hardly believe drugs and therapies will ever be approved based on simulated data.

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pre-DrChad t1_j6fu13g wrote

That’s pretty much what this sub is. We are all speculating what AI will do in the future. Do you believe the singularity is possible? If so, it’s an odd statement to make that therapies won’t be approved based on simulated trials. I doubt the FDA or any such regulatory bodies will even exist in the future. What’s the need for human regulations when we have super intelligence far beyond our own?

We already have organ on a chip models, so we already have the building blocks for simulating a human. At the point where trials on a simulated human can predict results as well as human clinical trials, I bet we stop using human clinical trials.

Since you work on human clinical trials, you would know that humans are very diverse and not every human responds the same way to a treatment. So it’s not like human clinical trials are even close to perfect. We can use technology to move past human clinical trials

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fxl53 wrote

Yes, but AI exists already and has been in use in biomedical research for a while. In-silico clinical trials does not.

We can speculate about the first, but not how the first will do in light of the second. Especially when we would have to also come up with a reasonable argument on how would simulated trials even get approved.

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pre-DrChad t1_j6g65h2 wrote

It will get approved when it is more efficient, less costly, and accurate than human clinical trials. Which will happen inevitably if we do reach the singularity

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6ftmsn wrote

Good points.

I just don't get why people aren't able to take greater risks, like say you have a terminal illness? Why not let people decide for themselves? I feel like I would want to take greater risks.

Also, we saw a whole new kind of vaccine get released in record time. Why isn't this kind of speed possible with other kinds of drugs?

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fx0os wrote

People decide for themselves. During patient recruitment there's an informative phase.

The patients who are interested in participating, and meet the eligibility criteria, have to be informed about the risks. That's meant to fulfill the informed consent requirements.

Many candidates choose not to move forward based on the risks. Or if they did enrolled, if other patients have poor outcomes or adverse incidents, or if they personally don't see improvements they can drop out.

Also, some patients just die, or have secondary health incidents that force them to cease their participation.

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not_a_thesaurus t1_j6ffhet wrote

A physician has to prescribe something new, or perform something new, and none of them wants to be first or out of step with the majority.

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