From reddit, by /u/
Calamondinchameleon, a summary of Ron's video.
Summary:
Update on Metabolic Trap Research
• The Robots have been fixed by Angela Chu.
• They are now in the process of screening the FDA approved drugs.
• 1,100 drugs to test and they are about one third through.
• They have found a number of drugs that appear to turn the IDO1 pathway back on in yeast.
• This could be due to other methods. It is possible that the drugs are turning on drug pumps that are removing the tryptophan from the cell.
• This should be easily fixed in yeast. They can even edit the genes of the yeast if necessary.
• They will continue to screen drugs and look for a common feature among them.
• It is likely that these drugs are binding to the IDO1 enzyme and inhibiting enzyme inhibition.
• If they can find commonalities in the drugs that work, it is more likely that it is doing what they want.
• They can also test these drugs on cells in vitro in a test tube, but they also need to test if they will work on human cells.
• They have been working on Macrophages from healthy people’s blood and will soon begin on patient’s blood.
• This is hard to do safely because of Covid-19 and because the blood cannot be freezed before use.
• Preliminary data shows that human cells can be in the metabolic trap.
• They are close to being able to test in vivo.
• Ron is excited, but so far they are trying to disprove the metabolic trap theory as this is the best way to test a theory.
• So far they have not managed to do so.
• They are also looking at other metabolic traps that could be involved in the disease.
