> It is possible to genetically engineer Streptococcus mutans, the dominant human mouth bacteria, to produce ethanol instead of cavity-causing lactic acid
I hope it's in such small quantities that it wouldn't cause any alcoholic effects?
Nonetheless, such a simple website with short and concise copy. Wasn't expecting that for a biotech startup. Hope it works, cavities suck!
Better question: do any increased risks from this outweigh the risks incurred from poorer dental health and procedures to address these? (particularly at high age)?
It's pretty unlikely to cause an intoxicating effect: it's surrounded by the mouth, so it'll be taken up almost instantly. It never gets to accumulate, so I'd expect the impact is far less than even something like kombucha.
I wonder what the religious implications might be.
Our body can assimilate 1 Alcoholic Unit per day without any problems. I doubt those bacteria would produce anything in that order of magnitude so I truly don't understand your reply. Did you just blindly write: "alcohol therefore bad"?
So a patent that predates their work could, at most, frustrate them for 20 years, or two decades. I have no idea who these guys are or what patents they're referring to, but the use of the word "decades" here is not obviously deceptive.
Technically yes, but there are caveats to this. Drug companies regularly create new variants with no distinguishing characteristics but which reset the patent clock, using litigation, trademarks, secrets, and other tactics to prevent the original variants being used.
...which is exactly what the folks at the link are proposing. From their Investment Proposal doc:
> However, we can create a new, derivative strain of SMaRT, which would be under new IP protections, and therefore, would very likely be of interest to a large pharma company.
That’s the freedom-to-operate side. But “Patent hell” could also be the lack of clear IP that would allow a commercializer to capture a return on developing this. Not much incentive to spend tens of millions on trials if at the of the process the product can be sold by anyone.
This sounds like great additional protection, but I would still like to brush and floss to get the remaining food grime out of my mouth. Meaning it really doesn’t change my life all that much.
It would certainly be a game changer for lower income families.
Good choice. Gingivitis is a deeper problem than cavities. Without your gums you lose not just your teeth, but it can become a systemic infection. And it's much harder to fix than a cavity.
I don't think anyone is suggesting this would replace brushing and flossing.
Plenty of people still have problems with cavities, despite taking good care of their teeth (seems genetics plays an outsized role in tooth/gum health). Not having to worry about cavities would likely be of great value to them.
So its patent encumbered?
If there was a time for the “bio-hackers” this would be it. I heard everyone can perform some basic CRISPR so could we make this bacteria at home?
Because there's no downside to the current system they use. They only out-compete if you modify them in other ways to make them more successful in addition to the change you want.
Probiora seems similar, but less sticky (it recommends a daily dissolvable tablet instead a once a decade tablet) and instead of producing ethanol, produces hydrogen peroxide.
What happens when these get into the esophagus and produce oxide species? Extra free radicals can't be great for your DNA. I wonder what the long term cancer outcomes would be.
Hydrogen peroxide producing bacteria are far more of a known factor than ethanol producing bacteria where it comes to long-term interactions with human mucosa, the former being a natural part of human vaginal flora.
Interesting product, but the site has one of the worst GDPR controls ive seen - silently redirects to Google if you attempt to view the site from an EU IP address. Thought my computer is going nuts
Surely that’s the reason and not the EU penalty for simply storing cookies “without consent” being so severe as to practically negate the value of EU citizens on the internet.
There's a lot more nuance to the GDPR. It's perfectly possible to use cookies and not need a banner. Our industry's use of banners is just a passive aggressive reaction to being told to respect our users.
Cookies needed for a functional site can be used without notice.
The permission popups are only needed if you want to gather and store data. And why do that if you don't want to use it?
If you're really worried you can write a simple privacy policy stating your server stores some stuff like the client IP etc. (so you can do something like, block abuse) and then follow that policy to the letter by not doing anything else with the data you gather.
Now imagine you don't give a shit about EU customers and just having to think of what our idiotic rules are is a waste of money. And all of this because I want to use google analytics and see how many people my landing page is getting? I would redirect us as well.
I did the same for VATMOSS when I was not in Europe: if I need to spend 5 days implementing VAT rules and collecting proof, I need to evaluate what I'll make from EU customers and if that's not likely to be significantly more than implementation cost you can all go and buy stuff somewhere else.
I just blame our idiot EU politicians for restricting freedom on the internet.
Oral bacteria are a complex system of delicate balance. There are second-order effects that can arise which undermine the benefits of the first-order effects.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324621
What’s a fair price? Spending well over $20k on dental work over a lifetime is easy for many people. Adjust for inflation and it’s a steal. Cavities often lead to eventual root canals which require a crown which one day will probably require an extraction and a dental post and prosthetic tooth. That is probably around $8k or more for a single tooth at todays rates.
The time-value of money means the adjustment goes the other way. $20k is absolutely insane. That’s three times the cost of a full orthodontic treatment. They’ll get a handful of customers, if that.
$2k is more likely as a price point for mass adoption.
$20k is likely the price for early adopters, while production rates are low. Within a year or three the price would likely fall to some stable long-term rate. $2k indeed sounds about right.
The average American probably spends about 20k in their lifetime, that's probably where they got their pricing from. They get a check-up a year and a handful of fillings with some prosthetics if they live long enough. Which totals to around 20k.
The average American also cannot afford 20k in one shot they can't even afford 2k.
If this is such a revolutionary technology and it is cheap to mass produce, it should be like water fluoridation and similar state funded measures that increase overall population health. I am not arguing that $20k is more than regular dental work's cost over a lifetime, in the US at least, but that it's because dental work is so expensive is why oral health is so bad worldwide,Lifestyle, sugar consumtion and the like notwithstanding.
Maybe it ought to be that way. But we believe in property rights and government confiscation of property isn’t something I support.
Might be the pols manage to find a way to buy the tech to give away freely to the people. Until then it’s theirs to distribute as they please until their exclusive rights expire.
I wasn't talking about confiscation, although expropriation and similar measure are common when done for a public good. Anyway in this case I think the whole product is bogus and it's mostly VC bait.
thats not the way this works. Paying $20k over a lifetime vs an up front $20k payment means the up front $20k payment also includes the opportunity cost of the interest made - your up front payment of $20k is much more valuable than $20k over 60 or 70 years. That same $20k might be a large part of a downpayment on a mortgage and you'd get back many more times the value than if you spent it on your teeth all at once.
Sure, but you're literally throwing an opportunity to own property which historically is the best possible return to get preventive work done on your teeth. And not all healthcare is the same, so I'm not even sure dental costs are rising at the same rate as "healthcare".
You can engineer something yourself using a kit like the one they give to iGEM participants. If the business model relies on exorbitant pricing, then there's something off somewhere.
As soon as you've had a dose you can just start kissing people and they will get it too. Or do what the government does in bioweapon simulations and just start spraying cities with it to see how easily it spreads.
This is certainly an interesting idea, but there's absolutely no way for anyone to judge whether the claim on this page is bulletproof true, something plausible worth researching more, or just total nonsense.
But the fact that there isn't a single link to any scientific paper or evidence whatsoever, or even a single person's name linked to the site (or source of funding or anything), makes me assume this is just spam or a scam.
Apsec112, why did you submit this? How did you find it? Can you give us any context to suggest that anything about this is legit?
And anybody else -- are there actual published results from legit scientists on this? Is this a real thing, or just make-believe?
Because this is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not just 11 sentences.
Edit: I missed that at the very bottom of the page there's a link to a... Google Drive folder? [1] But it's disorganized and not exactly, well, professional. I can't make heads or tails of anything in it, or find anything that suggests credibility.
Sorry, but we don't know you either, so a word-of-mouth referral doesn't tell us much here. The Google Drive link doesn't provide anything substantive, like links to peer-reviewed, published research.
If your friends are looking for feedback, you can pass on that at least one person on the internet finds it in very bad taste for them to describe the delay in treatment as a "civilizational embarrassment" while planning to charge $20k for a dose. The pricing point seems equally a civilizational embarassment to me.
Capitalism at its finest. A civilization should be measured at how it treats the poorest. By selling such an incredible cure (if it's really working) for thousands of dollars makes it impossible for the low-income class to purchase.
"LANTERN BIOWORKS, INC. is a California Non-Profit Corporation - Ca - Public Benefit filed on January 4, 2023. The company's filing status is listed as Active and its File Number is 5412825.
The Registered Agent on file for this company is Tovella Dowling, PC and is located at 501 W Broadway Suite 1310, San Diego, CA 92101. The company's principal address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101 and its mailing address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101.
The company has 3 contacts on record. The contacts are Aaron Silverbook from San Diego CA, Connor Flexman from San Diego CA, and Nick Mossakowski from San Diego CA.
It seems hard to believe the ethanol producing bacterial strain would dominate your oral microbione for life from one application. But I’m willing to have an open mind and see some data.
They need to get the data off of the Google drive and presented in a better way. I don’t click unknown Google drive links if I can avoid it.
Brushing your teeth and using mouthwash wipes out the majority of the micro biome. Application of the new strain shortly after could totally replace it wholesale.
That said, I can’t imagine there’s not other side effects that just aren’t known yet. The sample size and reporting (as far as we know) is just too small and meaningless.
Does brushing and mouthwash really eliminate your microbiome? I heard it does precious little. Most of the microorganisms live below the gumline and surfaces. If that were true it would eliminate caries! Please post links
Mouthwash (WITH alcohol) daily almost completely eliminates the need for daily brushing and flossing. This was later retracted by demand of the ADA to only say "as good or better than flossing"; from here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894074/ "mouth rinses would be considered to be “at least as good as” daily flossing if the upper limit of the 90% confidence interval" there are a number of studies on this topic and they all seem to generally be in agreement. Mouthwash even once a week is really good for dental hygiene. They make alcohol free mouthwash but it's hard to argue with the antimicrobial properties of alcohol and the price difference is neglible.
In one of their articles they claim that the microbiome is stable over 15 years, but this is categorized as "unpublished work" which leaves me with a large sense of doubt. I don't mind research that is in preliminary stages (as in conference abstracts, technical papers, etc), but the fact they are very naïve in how they approach scientific evidence makes me highly doubtful.
Good point. But that would be odd then to present it as solved in 1985 if only recently was figured out how to put it into a protocol. That would be a new innovation rather than “been around forever but never used.”
As a layman, I would be concerned about trying to control a bacterium called Streptococcus mutans, as that, to me, signals “this thing mutates rapidly”.
Mutations trend towards stable states. Stable states further trend towards states where fast mutation becomes disabled because it's in a "good" stable zone.
Symbiosis is the ultimate stable state.
You can get stable states in intermediate zones like hiv infections, but these zones are not as good as symbiosis. They have potential to kill off a weak population, additionally humans are actively combatting the virus. In symbiosis there's no negative for either side.
There is no evolutionary pressure to "mutate" in symbiosis. Mutations will occur in the beginning. Those will die off fast and eventually the strain will become more and more stable as the gene starts mutating towards a configuration that has slow mutations.
As I understand it you left off the key reason why symbiosis is a stable state for a parasite/symbiote: because other states tend to destroy the host, causing the mutated strain to (usually) have a harder time propagating. That's all well and good when you're looking at evolutionary theory writ large, it's less appealing when you're talking about sticking a new bacteria in a specific person's mouth.
No untrue. That is the most extreme case. A parasite can make a host less healthy and less likely to reproduce. This all lives on a gradient where parasitic relationship move the likelihood of reproduction down a little while symbiosis is the most extreme state where reproductive success is only positively effected.
>it's less appealing when you're talking about sticking a new bacteria in a specific person's mouth.
What does appeal have to do with anything? Much of our medical treatments were unappealing at one point in time. Colonoscopy? Sticking a camera up your ass to prevent cancer. Surgery? Cutting you open to fix something. None of it appealing but all of it necessary and worth it in the end.
Also keep in mind we live in times where much of the food we eat is bioengineered to live in symbiosis with us. The difference is instead of directly manipulating the gene, we indirectly manipulate it through artificial offspring selection. All domesticated animals and plants have been manipulated this way at a macro level for eons. The difference here is that the manipulation is happening on the molecular level rather then the macro level.
Your aversion to it is just instinctive and habitual but it's no different to much of the things we already do.
> A parasite can make a host less healthy and less likely to reproduce. This all lives on a gradient where parasitic relationship move the likelihood of reproduction down a little while symbiosis is the most extreme state where reproductive success is only positively effected.
Whether or not the host is destroyed, that symbiosis is the end game is not reassuring to someone whose mouth has gotten worse as a result of the treatment.
I'm not saying it won't work and isn't worth a large scale trial, I'm just saying your arguments based on evolutionary theory aren't a sound basis for medicine. I would not take a tapeworm into me on the grounds that someday tapeworms might evolve into a symbiotic relationship with humans.
>Whether or not the host is destroyed, that symbiosis is the end game is not reassuring to someone whose mouth has gotten worse as a result of the treatment.
That is the point of clinical trials. No treatment can be released until it has been verified to be safe.
>I'm not saying it won't work and isn't worth a large scale trial, I'm just saying your arguments based on evolutionary theory aren't a sound basis for medicine.
I never said it was a sound basis in it's current form. It's a sound basis to move forward rahttps://news.ycombinator.com/newspidly to change the current theory into a sound basis.
> I would not take a tapeworm into me on the grounds that someday tapeworms might evolve into a symbiotic relationship with humans.
one average guy who literally did the opposite of you. Against all medical advice, he infected himself with hookworms:
The innovative risk takers are the ones that try things out and move things forward. I'm not recommending you become one, but I recommend you support people who have the drive and willingness to do this because you and I only stand to benefit.
The other problem with science is that it's slow. Will science produce a verified treatment in your lifetime? Clinical trials cost millions. Maybe they'll do one, maybe not. In those cases if you have no other option, take a risk.
But here, we move this organism to a state of which we don’t know whether it’s stable. If it isn’t, it may take a while to get back to a stable state and, in-between, it could be nasty.
Also, I would think the Spanish flu, the Hongkong flu, COVID-19, etc. are examples of cases where “trending towards stable states” had fairly dire consequences.
>But here, we move this organism to a state of which we don’t know whether it’s stable.
We have to test the stability in experiments. Logically though we can assume it's stable as all the macro evolutionary pressures make sense here. When a virus kills, it's almost always a fluke one off mutation.
>Also, I would think the Spanish flu, the Hongkong flu, COVID-19, etc. are examples of cases where “trending towards stable states” had fairly dire consequences.
Yes they are trending towards stable states. But these are huge anomalies of conditions involving death. Likely instable states of mouth bacteria basically involve the newly introduced bacteria dying off or having new side effects. Again this has to be measured. I think it can be easily done with primates getting fed human diets.
I think you're just reacting to the fear mongering headlines of killer virus. What's going on here isn't living at those extremities and is ultimately a different topic. Cavities in our mouths are also stable states, the goal is to push it out of this zone into the ultimate stable state of symbiosis.
As I layman, I am more concerned that drastic alterations to the oral microbiome could have many negative downstream effects on health, from everything to digestion (naturally) to heard disease and neurodegenerative disorders. All of which show some correlation to an altered oral microbiome. We barely understand the connections, but that is obviously an argument in favor of caution.
I'm grateful that there are people out there willing to be guinea pigs for stuff like this, but I definitely wouldn't touch this kind of product until there are years (ideally decades) of usage with systemic scientific investigation into immediate complications as well as long term health impacts.
I take very significant issue with the fact their appendix A and B do not link to the original literature. When I was skimming the pitch deck, I thought they had done the experiments themselves, but it just looks like they copy pasted the results without proper citation. At best this appears as miscommunication, at worst misrepresentation of the work they have accomplished.
I work in medical startup space and the evidence we develop to prove our technology works typically has a higher threshold than what I've seen presented. I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research. Do they intend to carry out any additional pre-clinical research (in vitro/in vivo)? Do they intend to do a clinical trial? It appears from their slide deck that they don't?
>I work in medical startup space and the evidence we develop to prove our technology works typically has a higher threshold than what I've seen presented.
Like what?
>I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research.
Like what?
Educate the layman instead of saying this is no good, please.
>are there actual published results from legit scientists on this?
The main papers referenced by document on the page are by JD Hillman on 1987[0] (et al) and 2002[1]. A layman review was done few years later by PopSci[2]. This specific site and company appear to have no relation to Hillman or Oragenics (co-founded by Hillman) that holds a patent on this[3,4].
The FAQ in the google drive linked on the page tries to answer these questions.
Will this spread to everyone I kiss?
It’s very unlikely in non-immunocompromised adults. However, if you’re concerned, you should avoid kissing anyone taking oral antibiotics, or children.
[...]
From the pitch deck in their linked Google Drive it looks like the patent on the original strain expired and their whole idea is to create a slightly different strain they can patent again and sell for 20k/dose.
Not quite as altruistic as their initial framing makes it seem...
Doing a couple Google/Twitter searches for this company it's pretty obvious it's coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which automatically makes me pretty skeptical. These people don't exactly have a stellar track record of medical startups (recall all the hype around MetaMed, which delivered precisely nothing).
Almost everyone is afraid of death. Like, if you point a gun at someone, most people will feel fear. The main exceptions are people who are so sick with age-related diseases that they can't live happy lives anymore, but, of course, aging interventions would help with that.
Longevity isn’t really about adding more years. No one wants to live another 10,20,30 more years how we currently do. But, if you can improve everyone’s health span, the amount of healthy, able bodies years, why wouldn’t you? It would be a great relief to our health care system. People can spend more time doing what they love without worrying about their body giving out on them.
Being someone who lost two immediate family members before 30, I’d do anything to have had them live longer and healthy instead of watching the slow and fast decline of the human body.
I'll raise my hand and say I'll gladly live another 30, 300, or 3,000 years longer than we currently do. Why in the hell would I want to cease existing?
I was referring to how a lot of the elderly live where they have no community, their body is shot, their mind is going, and modern medicine just keeps them in pain longer (if you were commenting directly to me)
Yeah - I don't get this take. Always rings a bit fanatical where you believe in some heaven, or suicidal at worst. I enjoy my neurons firing, because if they weren't, i wouldn't know it.
As a big science fiction fan who has been reading his whole life about fantastical possible futures for humanity, I'm not so much afraid of death as just super bummed that I'm going to miss out on things like exploring the solar system and hopefully beyond. The universe is such a mind-bogglingly fascinating place, and we know so little about it. I'm intensely curious to know how that's all going to pan out.
That is, if humanity doesn't destroy itself before then.
Not sure if you are kidding, but death is bad. I assume you don't want to die now, so why would you want to any other time? And don't say 'because I'm old', because obviously aging is part of the problem. Being 20-30 forever is the goal.
Death is not bad - without it life makes no sense.
Being 30 forever and immortal would be my definition of hell.
Death is doing a great job, leave it alone.
you are reading something into my comment that is not there - I was saying immortal life would be a meaningless existence and no panacea to the human condition.
Trying to escape death is not only futile, it is a waste of life.
You are right of course, we should all touch grass more (I.e. really live) instead of trying to "solve" the human condition.
You misunderstood me too. Go touch grass and see what is so great about living. Then I don’t think you can fairly say we should have less years to live.
Can't wait to be a perpetually 20-year-old immortal Wal-Mart cashier because all the good jobs have already been taken by the other immortal 20-year-olds. Cleaning public toilets for the rest of eternity.
> These people don't exactly have a stellar track record of medical startups (recall all the hype around MetaMed, which delivered precisely nothing).
I can only think of one other medical startup coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which would be Equator Therapeutics. They're working on an anti-obesity drug, and my understanding is it's going pretty well. But maybe you have others in mind?
(MetaMed came out of the NYC-area rationalist cluster and ~predates EA, and Alvea came out of the Boston-area EA group and shut down after their vaccine candidate gave disappointing results in human trials.)
Their org chart includes "Aella", who is apparently acting as their "media advisor" [0]. That tells you just about everything you need to know about this organization.
The question I always have with this type of stuff is: why is it not _already_ huge. Cavities were a big thing already in 1985. If this was a miracle cure in 1985 then I do not believe that this study would have ended in 'ok that was fun, back to normal life'. This has huge commercial potential if true, so the apparently implications is that there is something blocking that commercial application.
Was it FDA? Was it side effectives? Is it impossible to scale this up? What is it that made this "miracle cure" just stop.
Because they can charge $40-$80 (or more) for a fluoride treatment. It's actually how they make money on cleanings. If you don't opt for the fluoride treatment it's a wash.
It's not nonsense. Perhaps many don't, but most ask (at least where I am). They literally ask you when you go in for a cleaning if you want fluoride and then charge you. My current dentist charges $40. My last dentist (Orange County) charged $80, which was a total scam place I only went to once.
Hell, my dentist doesn't ask: they just assume I want it ($80, SF bay area) unless I tell them otherwise.
I'm honestly kinda meh on my dentist, but getting me to go to the dentist at all is a slog (and I very much appreciate that they make me a new appointment for next time while I'm still there); the idea of expending the effort to find a new dentist feels paralyzing.
I end up just letting them do it. My teeth aren't exactly in the best shape. Unclear if the fluoride treatment actually does all that much, but it certainly doesn't hurt, and I don't want to look back when I'm older and regret not spending $160/yr for better teeth. I'd much rather look back and regret (but in reality not particularly care) that I wasted $160/yr.
There are no benefits from ingestion - it's actually harmful and linked to a series of terrible stuff (cognitive development issues and neurological problems in primis).
The only benefits are from topical application.
Source: my parents fed me fluoride pills for my entire childhood
My old dentist would give me a pump of it and have me swish for a minute. Billed insurance $20. Insurance always said "$5," then they "forgave" the rest, probably because I'd be asking some questions about how that costs them $20.
I think that's something else, just a fluoridated mouthwash? At my dentist it's something they "paint" on my teeth with a q-tip, and then tell me not to eat or drink for a few hours.
Yes, sometimes it takes time, like in Japan the birth control pill ..
"Campaigners here joke that it took the country 30 years to approve the contraceptive or birth control pill, but just six months to approve the Viagra pill for male impotence. Both became available in 1999, but the latter came first."
Well you have to take birth control constantly and a lot of very young women end up having it. You could easily wipe out a generation of fertile women if you didn’t do it correctly. On the flip side, old men (usually) that sometimes need to use a pill doesn’t seem all that dangerous.
Some other countries have healthcare systems where the primary goal is the patient outcome, and lowering the need for treatment is considered a win. If this were a thing, you'd expect that it might have been picked up and trialled in one of those places.
Universal healthcare systems very often don't extend to dentists. This is part of the reason British and Japanese stereotypically have bad teeth.
Meanwhile in the capitalist US, I haven't seen mine in months because her husband does her bookings and seems to be unable to remember to call me back. Small business owners usually don't profit maximize, and unfortunately it'd be better if they did.
If you want to more or less permanently stop gum bleeding pre-brush with a dilute (50 to 200 ppm) solution of hypochlorous acid generated from vinegar acidified salt water (0.8-2%) with salt concentration (saline is 0.8-0.9%) then hit it with a
$5 Aliexpress USB electrolyzer for about 30 seconds. The biofilms come right off, your toothbrush ceases to accumulate biological matter, and hypochlorous acid does not begin to show toxicity in keratinocytes until 10,000 ppm. It is extremely unpleasant in the mouth above 200 ppm so it is relatively easy to guesstimate.
Or just rinse (water pick even better) with a dilute bleach solution (0.25%). Make the solution fresh each time or every 24 hours, since sodium hypochlorite tends to decompose easily.
Don't use bleach when you can easily make hypochlorous acid. Hypochlorous acid is bleach but acidified and much safer to the human body than bleach. Bleach is thousands of times more toxic to humans at the same HOCl concentration. You suggest using an OCl- concentration of 2500 ppm which would be extremely high for an equivalent therapeutic use of hypochlorous acid. You can easily use a 10 times lower concentration of hypochlorous acid for the same purpose, and it would still be total overkill. You can easily make hypochlorous acid with electrolysis safely or by mixing highly dilute bleach with highly dilute acid (vinegar) with a target pH range of 4-6. If your solution pH falls below about 4 there may be chlorine gas evolution which is generally undesirable. Above pH 4 it is not significant. Given the desired HOCl dilution hardly any chlorine gas will be emitted even if working in a confined space and using an excessively low pH. I recommend the electrolysis route for use in and around the body because the route is generally free from potentially harmful contaminants which may be in your bleach products. The bleach and acid method is useful to make a general purpose deodorant and disinfectant or if you trust your bleach to be free from harmful contaminants. https://www.dstec.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/pH-for-H...
Hypochlorous acid is hundreds of times more effective than bleach as a biocide because it is uncharged and can far more readily diffuse past the lipid bilayer of microbes to wreak havoc. Somehow, humans are generally much more immune to these effects. Whereas 0.1 ppm HOCl can kill most bacteria it takes approximately 10,000 ppm to damage most human cells. It is not recommended to use much over a handful of ppm in the nose and eyes.
Do you have any research papers supporting those assertions? At least with low-concentration bleach, it's been tested numerous times in RCTs without any harmful effects, besides bad taste. It's also proven effective, or at least as effective as prescription-based chlorhexidine mouthwash.
I'm interested in reading more, because I find diluting the bleach solution to be annoying and would obviously damage dyed fabrics if spilled.
A different generalization is that dentists make more money on treatments, and less on diagnosis or preventive care. It's hard to say if this is really a conspiracy theory since the diagnoses from different dentists aren't always consistent.
But it wouldn't be surprising that there's pushback against any technological breakthrough where established industries had something to lose. The FDA is not a stranger to corruption[1,2], so it wouldn't be far-fetched for lobbyists in the dentist industry to grease a few palms in their favor. Big Pharma is an ugly business.
It costs a ton of money to bring a treatment to market, and this one has roughly zero commercial value. Presumably once in the world it would naturally spread just by people kissing or whatever.
I don't think it's totally impossible that this really works and everyone gave up on it.
But I'd probably still put my money on this not really working (or having unwelcome side effects) and people quietly shutting down the project without publicly documenting the issues.
They say it was because of FDA approval. As it was GM, in order to prove it is safe they wanted a study done on healthy people who are completely isolated from the human race so that they can't spread it. As nobody lives in a place where they are completely isolated from the human race it wasn't a very realistic. Then the patent ran out so it wasn't worth it for any drug company to proceed with approval because everyone else would just wait until they've paid the fee and then sell it too.
A one time cure for cavities is just bad for business!
Same with RISUG, a cheap semi-permanent reversible male contraceptive made with a tiny piece of plastic (which would destroy condoms and female hormonal pill - never got to the western world) or ocumetics, the bionic eyes promising 20/20 for everyone with a simple cataract surgery (which seems to be stuck in a endless cycle of getting bought, and doing trials).
Now this topic has a huge grain of salt, but imagine something that one cheap treatment of basically wipes out an entire industry do you think that industry and associated ones wouldn't fight tooth and nail to buy it an bury it? I know it's been said the same thing about various engine designs, but just for the sake of argument I believe that's what they're saying here.
It's easy enough to test this without investor money, you just need a simple kit and some dentures (not literally, I meant teeth essentially). The design of the experimental protocol is key.
That happens all the time anyway, and your liver has no trouble keeping up. It’s a poison your body always knew how to handle, so long as you don’t reach megadoses of the stuff.
If the bacteria is in the public domain, is there a way we could just order some and try it out ourselves? I'd be interested in being a test subject. They've got decades of evidence showing it had no side effects so it's not even a risky thing.
So within the existing population today there exist individuals who essentially never get cavities. The hypothesis for this has been 1. they don't eat sugar, or only fibrous foods, etc. 2. They have a genetic difference that builds stronger enamel or similar.
I have never heard of anyone discussing bacteria in the mouth as a possible difference. Be interested to see if there is a natural strand that some people have present that could also be a culprit.
There has been modest support for this concept in term of gut bacteria, i.e. thin people who donate their excrement to fat people seem to inoculate them with a gut biome that helps them lose weight, or deal with digestive issues.
Yeah, it's always baffled me. Growing up I ate snacks and sugar fiendishly, but only ever had maybe one or two cavities in 2nd grade or so.
I had another friend who got cavities on an almost yearly basis. What was really fascinating was how boring her diet was; I never saw her eat anything more complex than a peanut butter sandwich or cheese pizza. She brushed, flossed and mouthwashed every day but could never get ahead of it. Meanwhile I went through all of middle and high school without any major dental work besides getting my wisdom teeth pulled.
It's all very odd, and my personal experiences have also led me to believe that diet plays a smaller role than we might think. I could be wrong though, I'm willing to defer to the most reasonable explanation.
It's genetic, some people just have thicker and strong enamel and salivary activity. Just like some people are scrawny and others are naturally strong without really trying
Are you good about brushing your teeth and flossing on the regular? Having lots of sugar isn't what causes cavities, it's not keeping up your dental hygiene. So if you eat a lot of sugar but brush well on a regular basis, I would expect you to not get cavities.
Genetics play a role as well. My mom never got cavities despite never brushing her teeth, whereas my dad could brush pretty regularly and still have a cavity or two when he got checked up. Sadly I inherited my dad's genes, not my mom's.
Depends. Nowadays yes, but younger no. I lived 2 years in west africa where clean water was a premium: I didn't brush my teeth much and drunk a lot of coke.
Scientist lurkers in the thread take note. We have a couple for the first cohort for testing to see if their mouth biome differs from base population. Inquiring minds want to know!
Anecdotally, none of my girlfriends seem to have developped any similar immunity. If the article is right, my flora should have replace theirs on the long run, no?
I have very strong (and ugly) teeth. The few "cavities" that I had, were actually made by dentists (they do that, y'know), and have resulted in a couple of crowns.
Otherwise, my teeth are great. I now have a dentist that doesn't make cavities, and she seems almost disappointed, when she checks me.
But gum care is every bit as important as tooth care (take it from me, you don't want a gum-scraping), and that is why I need to brush, floss, and mouthwash, twice a day.
A dental hygienist (those people who do maintenance cleaning at dentist’s offices) told me that saliva quality is key to cavity and periodontal health. The ability of keep all teeth moist prevents plaque/tartar build up. I don’t know how true that is, but this at least provide an alternative hypothesis to the two that you listed.
You should assume that everything related to digestion is caused by gut bacteria.
Nerds love saying things is "genetics" because they think it'd make humanities types mad if something was genetics. But it's like lupus. It's never genetics. (Except celiac.)
> "to produce ethanol instead of cavity-causing lactic acid"
So, brush your teeth and have ethanol in your mouth forever? I'm curious if this would be of high enough concentrations to show up on a breathalyzer, or if it would cause problems for people in recovery from alcohol or drugs.
I can see how this would have trouble attracting development funding. If your product is successful, people need one dose, ever. After some number have bought it the natural spread is likely to wipe out the rest of the market. It might be "pirated" with a kiss or a shared lollipop?
Against that, you have the entire dental industry, an established market of i dunno how much per year but substantial. They're already well versed in selling people intangibles packaged with inert ingredients. They've got a long history of "science to order" (9 out of 10 dentists agree!). They've got a large body of known sadists to call on for the less civil dispute resolution processes they might choose to employ.
I salute the folks behind this effort. Even if its all fairy dust you've put your lives on the line.
311 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadI hope it's in such small quantities that it wouldn't cause any alcoholic effects?
Nonetheless, such a simple website with short and concise copy. Wasn't expecting that for a biotech startup. Hope it works, cavities suck!
https://i0.wp.com/thebeerthrillers.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
Plus, the first sentence.
The guy's name is Donato Giannotto.Not being mean, just fun to say.
Edit: not at all funny and irrelevant, apparently.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mDJCTO2QySmQOZQcajYReDCA...
I wonder what the religious implications might be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mDJCTO2QySmQOZQcajYReDCA...
>The average human digestive system produces approximately 3 g of ethanol per day through fermentation of its contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism
Patents only last for 20 years.
> However, we can create a new, derivative strain of SMaRT, which would be under new IP protections, and therefore, would very likely be of interest to a large pharma company.
It would certainly be a game changer for lower income families.
Plenty of people still have problems with cavities, despite taking good care of their teeth (seems genetics plays an outsized role in tooth/gum health). Not having to worry about cavities would likely be of great value to them.
Bacteria has great speed of evolution.
https://probiorahealth.com/product/probiora/
That tells me everything I need to know, the site owner simply wants to steal my personal data and use it against me.
The permission popups are only needed if you want to gather and store data. And why do that if you don't want to use it?
If you're really worried you can write a simple privacy policy stating your server stores some stuff like the client IP etc. (so you can do something like, block abuse) and then follow that policy to the letter by not doing anything else with the data you gather.
It's not hard.
I did the same for VATMOSS when I was not in Europe: if I need to spend 5 days implementing VAT rules and collecting proof, I need to evaluate what I'll make from EU customers and if that's not likely to be significantly more than implementation cost you can all go and buy stuff somewhere else.
I just blame our idiot EU politicians for restricting freedom on the internet.
$2k is more likely as a price point for mass adoption.
Similar to how it would be a bargain to have paid for a college education today 20 years ago.
The average American also cannot afford 20k in one shot they can't even afford 2k.
Might be the pols manage to find a way to buy the tech to give away freely to the people. Until then it’s theirs to distribute as they please until their exclusive rights expire.
But the fact that there isn't a single link to any scientific paper or evidence whatsoever, or even a single person's name linked to the site (or source of funding or anything), makes me assume this is just spam or a scam.
Apsec112, why did you submit this? How did you find it? Can you give us any context to suggest that anything about this is legit?
And anybody else -- are there actual published results from legit scientists on this? Is this a real thing, or just make-believe?
Because this is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not just 11 sentences.
Edit: I missed that at the very bottom of the page there's a link to a... Google Drive folder? [1] But it's disorganized and not exactly, well, professional. I can't make heads or tails of anything in it, or find anything that suggests credibility.
[1] https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/18ZDSe92LgLmS0sUb...
So I guess $20k is near to the market price you could expect people to pay for a lifetime (with refills and no cavities guarantee) for this product.
If $20k it too much for you, just wait for cheaper generics.
"LANTERN BIOWORKS, INC. is a California Non-Profit Corporation - Ca - Public Benefit filed on January 4, 2023. The company's filing status is listed as Active and its File Number is 5412825.
The Registered Agent on file for this company is Tovella Dowling, PC and is located at 501 W Broadway Suite 1310, San Diego, CA 92101. The company's principal address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101 and its mailing address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101.
The company has 3 contacts on record. The contacts are Aaron Silverbook from San Diego CA, Connor Flexman from San Diego CA, and Nick Mossakowski from San Diego CA.
They need to get the data off of the Google drive and presented in a better way. I don’t click unknown Google drive links if I can avoid it.
That said, I can’t imagine there’s not other side effects that just aren’t known yet. The sample size and reporting (as far as we know) is just too small and meaningless.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12369203
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine
As a layman, I would be concerned about trying to control a bacterium called Streptococcus mutans, as that, to me, signals “this thing mutates rapidly”.
Symbiosis is the ultimate stable state.
You can get stable states in intermediate zones like hiv infections, but these zones are not as good as symbiosis. They have potential to kill off a weak population, additionally humans are actively combatting the virus. In symbiosis there's no negative for either side.
There is no evolutionary pressure to "mutate" in symbiosis. Mutations will occur in the beginning. Those will die off fast and eventually the strain will become more and more stable as the gene starts mutating towards a configuration that has slow mutations.
No untrue. That is the most extreme case. A parasite can make a host less healthy and less likely to reproduce. This all lives on a gradient where parasitic relationship move the likelihood of reproduction down a little while symbiosis is the most extreme state where reproductive success is only positively effected.
>it's less appealing when you're talking about sticking a new bacteria in a specific person's mouth.
What does appeal have to do with anything? Much of our medical treatments were unappealing at one point in time. Colonoscopy? Sticking a camera up your ass to prevent cancer. Surgery? Cutting you open to fix something. None of it appealing but all of it necessary and worth it in the end.
Also keep in mind we live in times where much of the food we eat is bioengineered to live in symbiosis with us. The difference is instead of directly manipulating the gene, we indirectly manipulate it through artificial offspring selection. All domesticated animals and plants have been manipulated this way at a macro level for eons. The difference here is that the manipulation is happening on the molecular level rather then the macro level.
Your aversion to it is just instinctive and habitual but it's no different to much of the things we already do.
Whether or not the host is destroyed, that symbiosis is the end game is not reassuring to someone whose mouth has gotten worse as a result of the treatment.
I'm not saying it won't work and isn't worth a large scale trial, I'm just saying your arguments based on evolutionary theory aren't a sound basis for medicine. I would not take a tapeworm into me on the grounds that someday tapeworms might evolve into a symbiotic relationship with humans.
That is the point of clinical trials. No treatment can be released until it has been verified to be safe.
>I'm not saying it won't work and isn't worth a large scale trial, I'm just saying your arguments based on evolutionary theory aren't a sound basis for medicine.
I never said it was a sound basis in it's current form. It's a sound basis to move forward rahttps://news.ycombinator.com/newspidly to change the current theory into a sound basis.
> I would not take a tapeworm into me on the grounds that someday tapeworms might evolve into a symbiotic relationship with humans.
one average guy who literally did the opposite of you. Against all medical advice, he infected himself with hookworms:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/23/parasit...
podcast on the same guy who infected himself with hookworms: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/404/enemy-camp-2010/act-thr...
The innovative risk takers are the ones that try things out and move things forward. I'm not recommending you become one, but I recommend you support people who have the drive and willingness to do this because you and I only stand to benefit.
The other problem with science is that it's slow. Will science produce a verified treatment in your lifetime? Clinical trials cost millions. Maybe they'll do one, maybe not. In those cases if you have no other option, take a risk.
Also, I would think the Spanish flu, the Hongkong flu, COVID-19, etc. are examples of cases where “trending towards stable states” had fairly dire consequences.
We have to test the stability in experiments. Logically though we can assume it's stable as all the macro evolutionary pressures make sense here. When a virus kills, it's almost always a fluke one off mutation.
>Also, I would think the Spanish flu, the Hongkong flu, COVID-19, etc. are examples of cases where “trending towards stable states” had fairly dire consequences.
Yes they are trending towards stable states. But these are huge anomalies of conditions involving death. Likely instable states of mouth bacteria basically involve the newly introduced bacteria dying off or having new side effects. Again this has to be measured. I think it can be easily done with primates getting fed human diets.
I think you're just reacting to the fear mongering headlines of killer virus. What's going on here isn't living at those extremities and is ultimately a different topic. Cavities in our mouths are also stable states, the goal is to push it out of this zone into the ultimate stable state of symbiosis.
I'm grateful that there are people out there willing to be guinea pigs for stuff like this, but I definitely wouldn't touch this kind of product until there are years (ideally decades) of usage with systemic scientific investigation into immediate complications as well as long term health impacts.
I work in medical startup space and the evidence we develop to prove our technology works typically has a higher threshold than what I've seen presented. I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research. Do they intend to carry out any additional pre-clinical research (in vitro/in vivo)? Do they intend to do a clinical trial? It appears from their slide deck that they don't?
Like what?
>I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research.
Like what?
Educate the layman instead of saying this is no good, please.
The main papers referenced by document on the page are by JD Hillman on 1987[0] (et al) and 2002[1]. A layman review was done few years later by PopSci[2]. This specific site and company appear to have no relation to Hillman or Oragenics (co-founded by Hillman) that holds a patent on this[3,4].
[0]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002203458706600...
[1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1020695902160
[2]: https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-01/germ-could-sa...
[3]: https://www.oragenics.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/3...
[4]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9260488B2/en
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OqDqFYMQdcS0XM4hORqN...
Also, would it really be safe to change the chimical equilibrium of the mouth?
The key is whether the unknown active management of this bacteria is preferable to the immense expense and problems of tooth decay.
I'd love to see links to papers, news articles, or some description of what they plan to do next.
Not quite as altruistic as their initial framing makes it seem...
Cool concept though!
(along with AI companies of course)
They're doing well numerically when it comes to funding but is there anyone who has actually lived materially longer as a result of the field?
https://www.wired.com/2008/03/ff-kurzweil/#:~:text=He%20is%2....
I will spend my time living instead of trying to avoid death.
Death is the end of EVERYTHING for an individual. What could be worse than that?
Everything else, we can figure out for ourselves, given time - pushing back death gives us more time.
More time is fine but don't waste it by trying to avoid death (protip: you can't)
Longevity isn’t really about adding more years. No one wants to live another 10,20,30 more years how we currently do. But, if you can improve everyone’s health span, the amount of healthy, able bodies years, why wouldn’t you? It would be a great relief to our health care system. People can spend more time doing what they love without worrying about their body giving out on them.
Being someone who lost two immediate family members before 30, I’d do anything to have had them live longer and healthy instead of watching the slow and fast decline of the human body.
That is, if humanity doesn't destroy itself before then.
Chugging 300 pills per day - you will still die.
It is inevitable.
https://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-anti-kurzwei...
I can only think of one other medical startup coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which would be Equator Therapeutics. They're working on an anti-obesity drug, and my understanding is it's going pretty well. But maybe you have others in mind?
(MetaMed came out of the NYC-area rationalist cluster and ~predates EA, and Alvea came out of the Boston-area EA group and shut down after their vaccine candidate gave disappointing results in human trials.)
[0] https://nitter.net/Aella_Girl/status/1705772547781140541
Not saying this company is or is not legit, but this doesn't seem like a reasonable vector for criticism.
Was it FDA? Was it side effectives? Is it impossible to scale this up? What is it that made this "miracle cure" just stop.
This is nonsense. Many dentists, mine included, don’t apply fluoride. (They trust you to use toothpaste.)
I'm honestly kinda meh on my dentist, but getting me to go to the dentist at all is a slog (and I very much appreciate that they make me a new appointment for next time while I'm still there); the idea of expending the effort to find a new dentist feels paralyzing.
I end up just letting them do it. My teeth aren't exactly in the best shape. Unclear if the fluoride treatment actually does all that much, but it certainly doesn't hurt, and I don't want to look back when I'm older and regret not spending $160/yr for better teeth. I'd much rather look back and regret (but in reality not particularly care) that I wasted $160/yr.
Here's a meta analysis for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK401516/
There are no benefits from ingestion - it's actually harmful and linked to a series of terrible stuff (cognitive development issues and neurological problems in primis). The only benefits are from topical application.
Source: my parents fed me fluoride pills for my entire childhood
I was referring to fluoride in water and toothpaste.
"Campaigners here joke that it took the country 30 years to approve the contraceptive or birth control pill, but just six months to approve the Viagra pill for male impotence. Both became available in 1999, but the latter came first."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62515356
Some other countries have healthcare systems where the primary goal is the patient outcome, and lowering the need for treatment is considered a win. If this were a thing, you'd expect that it might have been picked up and trialled in one of those places.
I can tell you publicly funded eu hospitals all want more treatments so they can justify bigger budgets. Rinse and repeat.
Meanwhile in the capitalist US, I haven't seen mine in months because her husband does her bookings and seems to be unable to remember to call me back. Small business owners usually don't profit maximize, and unfortunately it'd be better if they did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cow6wNRJqoo
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9292655/
Hypochlorous acid is hundreds of times more effective than bleach as a biocide because it is uncharged and can far more readily diffuse past the lipid bilayer of microbes to wreak havoc. Somehow, humans are generally much more immune to these effects. Whereas 0.1 ppm HOCl can kill most bacteria it takes approximately 10,000 ppm to damage most human cells. It is not recommended to use much over a handful of ppm in the nose and eyes.
I'm interested in reading more, because I find diluting the bleach solution to be annoying and would obviously damage dyed fabrics if spilled.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37022911
But it wouldn't be surprising that there's pushback against any technological breakthrough where established industries had something to lose. The FDA is not a stranger to corruption[1,2], so it wouldn't be far-fetched for lobbyists in the dentist industry to grease a few palms in their favor. Big Pharma is an ugly business.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/fda-chief-approved-oxycontin...
[2]: https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-conflicts-pha...
I don't think it's totally impossible that this really works and everyone gave up on it.
But I'd probably still put my money on this not really working (or having unwelcome side effects) and people quietly shutting down the project without publicly documenting the issues.
Same with RISUG, a cheap semi-permanent reversible male contraceptive made with a tiny piece of plastic (which would destroy condoms and female hormonal pill - never got to the western world) or ocumetics, the bionic eyes promising 20/20 for everyone with a simple cataract surgery (which seems to be stuck in a endless cycle of getting bought, and doing trials).
1. There's always new people.
2. If you don't do it, someone else will, because they'd rather be paid once than not have any business.
I have never heard of anyone discussing bacteria in the mouth as a possible difference. Be interested to see if there is a natural strand that some people have present that could also be a culprit.
There has been modest support for this concept in term of gut bacteria, i.e. thin people who donate their excrement to fat people seem to inoculate them with a gut biome that helps them lose weight, or deal with digestive issues.
I eat plenty of sugar.
I had another friend who got cavities on an almost yearly basis. What was really fascinating was how boring her diet was; I never saw her eat anything more complex than a peanut butter sandwich or cheese pizza. She brushed, flossed and mouthwashed every day but could never get ahead of it. Meanwhile I went through all of middle and high school without any major dental work besides getting my wisdom teeth pulled.
It's all very odd, and my personal experiences have also led me to believe that diet plays a smaller role than we might think. I could be wrong though, I'm willing to defer to the most reasonable explanation.
Genetics play a role as well. My mom never got cavities despite never brushing her teeth, whereas my dad could brush pretty regularly and still have a cavity or two when he got checked up. Sadly I inherited my dad's genes, not my mom's.
I _do_ have to brush my teeth etc... though, because i tend to have a lot of plaque if i don't.
Apparently either it is cavities, or plaque. You must take care of your teeth!
Otherwise, my teeth are great. I now have a dentist that doesn't make cavities, and she seems almost disappointed, when she checks me.
But gum care is every bit as important as tooth care (take it from me, you don't want a gum-scraping), and that is why I need to brush, floss, and mouthwash, twice a day.
You are the only person I have ever heard entertain this idea, so it would be better to spell out how this happened than assume everyone knows it.
Let’s just say that there has been a fair bit of press, over the years on the matter, so it may not be as singular an event as you might think.
Nerds love saying things is "genetics" because they think it'd make humanities types mad if something was genetics. But it's like lupus. It's never genetics. (Except celiac.)
So, brush your teeth and have ethanol in your mouth forever? I'm curious if this would be of high enough concentrations to show up on a breathalyzer, or if it would cause problems for people in recovery from alcohol or drugs.
Against that, you have the entire dental industry, an established market of i dunno how much per year but substantial. They're already well versed in selling people intangibles packaged with inert ingredients. They've got a long history of "science to order" (9 out of 10 dentists agree!). They've got a large body of known sadists to call on for the less civil dispute resolution processes they might choose to employ.
I salute the folks behind this effort. Even if its all fairy dust you've put your lives on the line.