Thoughts

where we are standing, and what we are doing

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By default the best (as in being objective and rigorous) way by a long shot is to do IHC for all layers in the thickness (z) dimension. The question is the feasibility and time spent doing this for the sake of temporal runway for finding the right cofounder, before potentially entering the fall cohort of SOSV SF/NY, or anything in the like (as in, having direct warm leads to customers).

  1. Ask Beatriz about the progress and when the test block quantification is done

    1. Then ask her about the feasibility of doing the more objective, all-layer staining + imaging + quantification; the most likely answer is that she cannot put that much effort in such a short time to do all the aspects, therefore, the more upstream of these three steps i mentioned, the more i need to rely on outsourcing. Staining for sure, imaging possibly, and quantification most likely unnecessary. All these, plus modeling, have to be done within 3-4 weeks, max 4 weeks. So most of the money/time/effort-consuming aspects should be approached externally, via HistoSpring.

  2. Return the results to Sun (just as a progress update, I believe he is actually paying for this from out of pocket, and therefore outsourcing makes more sense because it’s not feasible for him to pay for anything more than sectioning, and since my family isn’t poor, we should cover the rest of the 24 blocks).

  3. Regarding iCorps, Sun conglomerated that reproducibility is the main bottleneck. The key thing to do is to convert the belief system of the broader pharma, by perhaps helping smaller startups/firms to adopt this nascent area with our internal data as convincing material, then these smaller startups’ success that I hope and bet on would be the datapoint to convince more and more people, and thus everything compounds accordingly. The goal is not to be the best CRO; the goal is to be a platform that is the new default, the new standard — the AirPods or Tesla of drug discovery modality.

    1. The specific profiles, program lead names, and more nuanced opinions/psychology require speaking to Beatriz, and Sun is positive that she wants to help and stay involved in this project as a whole as it progresses after the experiment. I envision her as a technical advisor on the biology side, and a year later is the right time for her to join me, not me joining her.