1. The document proposes four pillars to address pandemics: fixing supply chains, providing intelligence during crises, predicting new epidemics, and developing new medicines.
2. It advocates building local supply chains for manufacturing essential supplies like masks and sanitizers to reduce reliance on other countries. This would include large-scale production divided into sectors like medical supplies, bioextracts, proprietary medicines, advanced instruments, and training.
3. Other proposals include using data analysis to provide policy guidance during crises, running public awareness campaigns, predicting drug resistance through genomic analysis, and exploring new targets and AI approaches for drug discovery. The document calls for collaboration and volunteer scientists to help address the COVID-19 pandemic.
1. Nipping plagues in the bud
and making ecofriendly local big scale
manufacturing units
Sukant Khurana
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2. Not just direct deaths from a pandemic but the
bleeding of economy kills and debilitates many.
How can we fix it?
Four pillars:
1. Fixing supply chain
2. Providing actionable intelligence for any ongoing crises
3. Predicting a new epidemic
4. Developing new medicines against infectious diseases
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3. Fixing supply chain
A. A combination of constant algorithmic and human search to find optimal product
supply. This will be a solution to price gauging.
B. Building local supply chains, from production to home delivery. Most countries’
reliance on outside countries for manufacturing are their Achilles heel, which get
exposed during pandemics. We should manufacture locally. The manufacturing should
be circular economy based, and at big scale. Such large scale should be divided into 5
segments: 1. Sanitary products, ethanol, masks, generic medical supplies. 2.
Bioextracts: supplements and nutraceuticals for domestic consumption and export. 3.
Novel proprietary medicines and diagnostic kits, reducing regions’s dependence on
other countries. 4. Advanced instruments, including drones and satellites. 5. Training
for 4th industrial revolution, including student and corporate upskilling and providing
services to others. Focus on tele-medicine and tele-education.
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4. 4
A. Most wholesale dealer buy from relatively fixed suppliers. Not rocket science or brain
surgery (although our scientists do both too) but we are just conducting smart search
to find suppliers of products which are in demand or are likely to be in demand (like
respirators, after a pneumonia causing epidemic) and establishing contacts to get
supplies. For immediate response, finding suppliers of sanitizers, gloves, masks,
cleaning supplies, toilet rolls, basic medicines makes sense but also finding novel
suppliers of food. We are working on identifying all major and medium scale global
manufacturers.
B. Setting new and local supply chains with local boys for home delivery in major cities.
For production, one should start with complete bio-extract fermenters. Farm waste
and leftover food is cheap if collected near source. Manufacturing supplements of
micronutrients and antioxidants from these will be a side product but main will be
ethanol and cellulose for paper manufacturing. Small gas production will be used for
plant’s energy needs.
5. Providing actionable intelligence for an ongoing
crises
• Imagine analyzing what news, social media, and movies are chatting about. Actually, it is straight
forward NLP and CV based pipeline. For example, we took HIV data and could tell what number,
kind, depth of coverage was there across USA and India and could tell county by county across
decades. In a 24 hour news cycle, despite talking points, there is lot of information hidden to
make smart policy decisions. We encourage people to build pipelines like we are building to
analyze outreach and guide policies.
• Running awareness campaigns. Campaigns work, if done properly. For example, in addition to
scientists we took several artists on board. With less than team of 20, few months back we have
created few hundred videos, are completing documentaries, made 200 slogans, few songs, board
games, designed apps for health awareness in collaboration with like-minded individuals and have
been well-covered in media for it. Now we have a team of few thousand for online campaigns
during the crises time of Covid-19. I am sure, you can even do better than us. Give it a try!
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6. Predicting a new epidemic
To successfully predict future is to be divine. We can, at present, be semi-divine.
We can:
• Predict through systems genomics approaches and have early detection of new drug
resistance through our network of physician-scientists collecting pathogenic strains from
several corners of the globe and testing for metabolic and genomic factors in response to
various micro-environments
• predict early surge in hospitalization in any region, reported in media through our NLP
pipeline. Let us build something even better together.
Futuristic work: We are working on signaling network simulations, which can predict likely
new zoonotic infections and novel drug resistance genes from existing databases but this at
ideation level and not POC.
We can’t in near future but aspire to one day: There are viruses from melting glaciers
which might infect humans soon, and unfortunately we cannot predict them at the
moment.
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7. Developing new medicines
Discussing what we are up to; hope others are doing even better:
• Novel but semi-conventional pipelines of relatively unexplored targets (few hundred
leads), with target being not just microbial ones but also immune system. A game-
changing lead we have for few bacteria alters macrophage interaction with several
pathogens and gets drug resistance for these out of the window.
• Our 6 different AI based pipelines work on finding novel biomarkers, generating
chemosimilars, new synthesis pathways, finding toxicity, coming up with more effective
formulations, and analyzing response of colonies and animals being tested. We also have
developed inhouse clinical trial management software and 7 POCs of blockchain for data
transparency and recordkeeping.
• We are collecting novel venoms, where peptides are ion-channel blockers, plant extracts
from previously un-sampled sources. Anything can be an inspiration for drug discovery, if
you have got the right eye for it. 7
8. Developing new medicines
• We have novel gelling agents and media to culture difficult to culture microorganisms.
Have published un-patentable few previously and are holding on to novel ones.
• Through global network, including our own set-ups, in addition to AI, we can reduce the
cost of drug discovery (including clinical trials) and aspire to manufacture in our own
plants.
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9. Additional game changers in addition to core
team, ideas, and set up
• The power of WE
• From day before yesterday’s volunteer call several hundred (and counting) trained
volunteer scientists and engineers working with us on various aspects of data science
and drug discovery for coronavirus, covid-19. Some good ones will likely stay with us
when this pandemic is over and help shape future responses.
• People are afraid of drug discovery because of its delayed results or return on
investments. Be bold. International grants, especially on corona virus, will keep the
development of new medicines afloat, in addition to investment and revenue from first
three pillars.
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10. Immediate need of each part of the globe
• Ensuring proper supply chain of essential commodities through predictive analysis and human
network.
• Manufacturing of ethanol (which should cost 0.3 $ a liter) for sanitizers, cleaners with
dimethylselane to prevent viruses from sticking to surfaces, N-95 and surgical masks, oxygen
supply and respirators (to help people who recover from Covid-19 infection but are left with lung
fibrosis.
• Awareness analytics to provide actionable intelligence to state and central government of all
countries.
• Awareness campaign, including apps, focus on mental health and hygiene.
• Drone technology and automation for controlling pandemic related crises.
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