Anthony Di Franco

Anthony Di Franco

Berkeley, CA

Counter Culture Labs

Researcher

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Open Insulin

By Anthony Di Franco

277%
funded

$25,000
next goal

19
lab notes

Haven't backed any projects yet! 

Published on Dec 31, 2018

New Frontiers for the New Year

We've got an update on the progress we've made and our plans for next year and beyond up on our blog. As mentioned there, we're wrapping up work on our first milestone, the lab-scale production of ...

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Published on Jul 19, 2017

Noel running SF Marathon for Open Insulin!

Hi all, our computational protein modeling expert Noel is running the San Francisco marathon this weekend to raise funds for the project! He's made a mini-documentary about the project as well whic...

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Published on Oct 05, 2016

Summer Update

We've got a new post on our summer progress up at the blog.Highlights: Inteview on the Juicebox Type I diabetes podcast! Talk at the Colorado State University Ethics Colloquium! Investigating new v...

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Published on Jun 20, 2016

June Update

We've got an update on our latest progress up over at the blog!Topics include: Progress with our new glowing construct! Our centrifuge breaking, and how we dealt! Computational work on insulin! Hav...

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Published on Feb 22, 2016

We're featured in the NY Times!

Quick update from Anna on our blog:http://openinsulin.org/wee-in/Here's the article:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/health/a-do-it-y...We've also got donations set up on our website if you want t...

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Published on Jan 24, 2016

First month's progress

We've got a new update on our progress up on our blog at openinsulin.org. Just a quick one but more should be coming soon from the rest of the team. Check it out!

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Published on Dec 07, 2015

The next steps

Thanks again everyone! With all your support, we've raised enough not only to begin the lab work, but to carry us through some of the first steps in the more complex aspects of the research.As such...

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Published on Nov 26, 2015

Second Stretch Goal

Hope everyone is enjoying a good digestion this evening!The word about Open Insulin has spread globally! We’ve had 6 websites mention our project including Vice Magazine, International Business Ti...

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Published on Nov 19, 2015

On to the main work!

A quick word before we publish more detailed updates in the next few days: Thanks to your support, we've just raised the entire budget to make both forms of proinsulin! (Our initial goal and our fi...

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Hi Paul! Sorry to hear. I had to borrow some Novolog myself a few months ago. Research goes quite well, and though our public channels have been quiet we've been heads down making a lot of progress and we're near a big milestone, so expect an update very soon!
Jun 27, 2018
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Thanks! Looking forward to announcing more exciting news soon.
Jan 12, 2017
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Thanks Avinash! I tried to load your link but it's not going through. Looking forward to checking it out when you've sorted it out.
Mar 17, 2016
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Thanks for the support Kim! Check out our blog at openinsulin.org for more recent updates.
Feb 22, 2016
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Also, if you're in the bay area you can join our weekly meetings at 7 pm Wednesdays and noon Sundays (Sundays are the big days for lab work), and if you're not you can join them via video chat, and we can all figure it out together.
Jan 19, 2016
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Thanks Brandon! Agreed. Now on to the actual work.
Dec 05, 2015
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Yes please do join a meeting or otherwise get in touch! We should collaborate in any appropriate way.
Nov 26, 2015
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Also, waiting for things to happen through established channels has a long record of disappointing diabetes patients, and generic insulin has been technically feasible for most of its century long history, but still hasn't come to market, so part of our motivation is finding ways to take the initiative. Look into the "we are not waiting" slogan to see more of this conversation: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WeAreNotWaiting&src=hash
Nov 19, 2015
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Good to hear from you! Just sent you an email.
Nov 19, 2015
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We saw an opportunity to use more modern techniques than the very complex ones covered by patents and run at global scale by large companies. We hope to make production much simpler and possible at smaller scales. We are aware that with the recent expiration of the latest round of patents there is some work going on to make generics through the usual channels but we would like to enable progress at smaller scales as well, to provide more opportunities for success and more of a basis for a truly competitive market and broader participation in research into new variants. Also, while one function of patents is ostensibly to provide others with documentation they can use to reproduce work, in practice a lot of wisdom needed to make a technique work is not in the documentation and must be re-discovered by trial and error. We are trying to produce techniques that come with this wisdom included in the documentation from the start. I certainly would not mind a bit if another group succeeded in bringing generic insulin to market faster, as that would save many lives. We are trying to broaden the field of who can participate and contribute in addition to looking at the narrower goal, and contributing what we can from our situation.
Nov 19, 2015
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I don't know anything about this one way or the other, but it seems like a good question for someone to investigate. We've got our hands more than full with making insulin right now though. Maybe have a look at the research index on PubMed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
Nov 15, 2015
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That's an interesting idea. We'd not be likely to pose for the camera too much but we can discuss at our next meeting.
Nov 11, 2015
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