# Key Points from IRC Discussion (March 28, 2012)

• MIT's DRACO antiviral technology showed promising results against 15 viruses including rhinoviruses, H1N1 influenza, and hemorrhagic fevers, though participants noted its limitations for viruses with latency periods like HIV.

• The economics of rare disease treatments revealed extreme pricing disparities, with drugs like Soliris costing $400,000/year per patient while manufacturing costs were potentially as low as $0.1-1/mg, prompting discussion of alternative production models.

• Participants proposed DIY biohacking approaches where small rare disease communities (like the 252-member atypical HUS community) could collectively fund equipment and researchers to produce medications at drastically lower costs than pharmaceutical companies.

• India's compulsory licensing of Bayer's cancer drug sorafenib was discussed as a significant case study, allowing generic production with a 6% royalty after Bayer charged approximately $69,000/year in a country where this was 41 times the average annual income.

• Technical discussions about microfluidics fabrication compared laser cutting versus soft lithography methods, with participants exploring DIY approaches using CDROM components and interferometry to achieve micron-level precision at a fraction of commercial costs.

• The conversation included detailed troubleshooting of plasmid cloning issues, where unexpected bacterial colony growth patterns suggested possible toxic protein expression interfering with cell growth.

• Participants shared information about DNA synthesis company DNA 2.0, noting their capacity to synthesize "tens of thousands of genes" with pricing around $0.80/bp and turnaround times of 5-15 days.