Pete Wallach (@pwallach87) profile picture

Top 5 cartwheeler in the Midwest*. Opinions are my own. Founder, @Synapticure. YCS20. investor and formerly @bainandcompany

Chicago, IL
Joined March 2012
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Noor is helping end genetic disease. Check out her amazing TED talk with a little shout to Jen and my girls. ted.com/talks/noor_siddiqui_…
Replying to @noor_siddiqui_
This is Lucy. Born in December. Not because of luck. Because of a choice. She doesn't have to become a patient before she becomes a person. She just gets to be a kid. For 300,000 years, every parent handed their child a genetic hand they’d never seen. That era is over. We are the first life form to read its own source code and select the next generation. Soon this will be the default way we have babies. I want to end the genetic lottery and let every family make their own luck. All of human history, we rolled the dice. We don’t have to anymore.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Adam the contrast was the point. Two different bad/fatal diseases yet very different response from the field to advances. We do not have a functional cure for many cancers but HR < .7 in any cancer is described as practice changing in oncology. Neurology seems underwhelmed by the same degree in disease change. Of course cancer is not one thing and I could have been more precise- CLL is not good but now mostly not fatal, due to many advances from Lilly and our peers HR+ HER - breast cancer has long survival now yet GI cancers are mostly unsolved and survival curves are terrible. You know what else is terrible? Almost every neuro-degenerative disease including AD and we (including the media) need to discuss it that way. Unfortunately I’ve witnessed end of life journeys up close in both diseases, while different horrors present themselves in each I’d say they are both pretty bad. Advancement 30%+ at a time should change practice and routinely be offered to patients and families. Oncology does this Neurology doesn’t.
$LLY Kisunla is an Alzheimer's drug. It's not a cancer drug. Different diseases, different trajectories, different patient population with different needs, different benefit-risk profile. @DaveARicks, speaking to @bradloncar, points to the hazard ratio from Kisunla's Phase 3 studies and says, "If this was a cancer drug, it would be a giant drug!" Ok, but it's not.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
We are heartbroken to announce that our friend Brooke Eby has passed away. We will always remember how she contributed to the movement and lived fully and unapologetically: "Through the support of my family, friends, and work, I’ve been able to laugh in the face of ALS."
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA—a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR. We don’t yet understand what this system does, but only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them are able to cut, copy, and paste DNA. Historically, the discovery of such programmable systems has helped revolutionize medicine. CRISPR, for instance, is now the foundation of genetic medicines. But it will take much more work to learn what this system does, and whether it can be put to similar use. Read more: anthropic.com/news/claude-di…
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Pete Wallach retweeted
A man with an uncommon type of motor neuron disease experienced improved symptoms after becoming the first person to receive a drug designed to target the genetic mutation that causes his disease go.nature.com/3UZaa9o
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Pete Wallach retweeted
There's lots of admin bloat, but IMO the lowest hanging fruit admin functions to remove in healthcare IMO 1) state by state licensing - just expand the interstate medical license and have a single one 2) payer specific credentialing - just create or mandate a shared credentialing process 3) duplicated quality report - most plans are asking for the same data but require different places to put it 4) anything requiring nurses to transform and input data somewhere (e.g. clinical registries) these seem like no brainers to me
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Pete Wallach retweeted
We're down to days, not weeks, to pass ACT for ALS. The House and Senate have each passed their own nearly identical bill. The only thing left is getting them to match. Sept. 14–17 is the window. Tell Congress to FINISH THE JOB! bit.ly/passA4A
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Welcome everyone. I wrote a short article about my story, science and what we need to make treatments a reality. Here’s the summary: My wife Jillian had rare ultra-lethal treatment resistant cancer (all TNBC is a multi-gene silencing disease but she had much worse mutations on top). I switched those genes/receptors back on. First documented in-human genes restored across chromosomes. I couldn't maintain the therapy (which I created in real time as she was dying) due to lacking metabolic control. However it did triple her survival time. I have in the 3.5 years since, improved it. 6 months later at hospice phase I eliminated her cancer stem cell (CSC) molecular pathways, that are involved in all cancers. Dropping all mutations, tumor cells, and proliferation markers in the process. This was also the first documented in-human CSC molecular elimination while concurrently dropping all cancer markers without toxicity. This was done as an isolated treatment but could support standard therapies. If it was done earlier, I could have saved her. But it was too late - I lost the battle and lost my love. I loved her more than anything. Our 3 babies (ages 1-3) lost their mother. I have raised them myself. I re-engineered existing FDA approved drugs to have improved bioavailability and biochemical targeting so they could translate preclinical efficacy into clinical efficacy. Everything done, including modulating metabolism, was deeply idiosyncratic and targeted to specific substrates. Ordinary processes wouldn't work. Trying to replicate it from the paper alone will not work (e.g. off the shelf versions of the drugs). All other therapies aside from mine, including chemotherapies, immunotherapies, natural medicines and repurposed drugs, failed to produce any response whatsoever. They failed on day one - not after some success. And in fact the cancer grew significantly through them. We had several oncologists, who reviewed IRL our results. They not only ordered the biopsies, those genetic samples are from the top oncology labs used by oncologists (Tempus, Cell Search etc.) it was also independently peer reviewed after the paper published. My son Arran is my primary focus now. He has dozens of genetic disorders, he has terminal mutations and very severe disabilities (including severe Autism). I do this for him. He is the reason I wrote Jill's paper, so we could build upon it and save him. He is the key to so many. He has some 2B people's disease in one child. He is the most complex genome we have ever seen. We need to build two separate programs: Gene Reprogramming to correct gene function across diseases, and the CSC therapy to suppress the causal growth of cancer. We are seeking partners to build both asap. Prior partners didn't pan out due to prioritizing patient programs and stewarding development. We need a controlled and safe path forwards so we can universalize it. -Find more on all this in the article below. I lost my wife. I am not gonna lose my son as well. This isn't an academic venture it is the highest stakes life event, hence don’t expect trolling debate here. It is all too real for SO MANY outside of biotech, universities and X arguments. We have created a discord community to join for free where people can help one another. Sorry you're suffering, I'm trying to change why you are. For Arran, for us all. I just want my family to be free from disease again. They say it is impossible, but my modulation of pharmacology and biology did the impossible a couple times before. It is indeed, entirely possible. P.S. I will be also launching a systems biology class of nutraceuticals very soon to support multiple high level molecular pathways that drive a lot of chronic dysregulation (brain fog, inflammation, immune support, etc.) inspired by my daughter's rare disease/Autism neuroinflammation. Everything I create is family first. Grok’s confirmation + Medical Records: nitter.gq/grok/status/1984350904…
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Pete Wallach retweeted
A future without ALS starts with research. Learn more by reaching out to us at [email protected] or 708-507-9691.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Praying and lifting up Chris Johnson and his family during this difficult time. You are inspiration to so many people not only by way you played the game but the character of man you are especially your family. CJ2K will always be one of favorite people of all time.#ENDALS
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Former NFL running back Chris Johnson revealed to Good Morning America that, at age 39, he has been diagnosed with ALS. goodmorningamerica.com/cultu…
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Home of American architecture, sketch comedy, world class food you can afford / get into, beautiful summers, rich local culture, affordable, unlimited fresh water, Lincoln park > Central Park but with beach front. Winters are rough tho
Say something nice about Chicago.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
for all you know, this could be your last summer. as homer wrote, you will never be lovelier than you are right now. so tell her she has a pretty smile. get lean or become a unit. find wonder in boarding the airplane. drink more coffee than you need. walk on the beach until your feet hurt. write your girlfriend a note on a tuesday. waste money because its not all about retirement. pull over at the lookout. ask the uber driver about his life. tell the woman in the elevator you like her shoes and mean it. call your mother. ask the waiter his favorite thing on the menu and order that. theres so much life in the slow moments, and you sprint past it chasing the next thing. but at any time, in any situation, you can find the good. smile. be happy. recognize it for a one of one life experience. what good is walking around a curmudgeon when tomorrow could be curtains. for heavens sake, flirt with the world.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
When we win, the first bill I’m filing is a national ban to end gerrymandering once and for all.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
Long term follow up of a phase 1 trial of an mRNA tumor vaccine shows that 7/8 patients with pancreatic cancer, who mounted an immune response to the vaccine, are still alive 6 years later. This is breathtaking data and shows the promise of mRNA vaccines. nbcnews.com/health/cancer/pa…
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Pete Wallach retweeted
People are already using ChatGPT like a primary care front door. This nature study shows that the 5% of LLM queries for health are symptom triage, “should I worry?”, “what do I do next?” happening outside the system. While there's a lot of pushback on the thesis of AI primary care we're Already seeing that: - Access has expanded massively (zero friction, always on) - But quality is uneven + unregulated - LLMs can have problematic behavior shifts (reassurance vs escalation) Fundamentally what this means is that some non trivial amount of primary is care being disintermediated at intake. And that AI native primary care that leverages the new front door has a chance to capture the top of tunnel while building for quality and consistency of care pathways.
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Pete Wallach retweeted
This new analysis of Alzheimer's drugs is such a good example of why we can't make any headway as a society. There is probably a good debate to be had on whether the risks and costs of the two approved beta amyloid drugs, Leqembi and Kisunla, are justified by their benefits. This is not that. The @cochranecollab authors took the data from the 15 Alzheimer's drugs that failed in clinical trials but had the same basic medicine (antibodies against beta amyloid) as the two that succeeded and lumped them all together. You don't need statistics to know how silly this is. If you lumped the two fastest sprinters in the world with 15 people who never qualified for a race you'd conclude all people are slow. Having good debates requires both sides to put forward a thoughtful argument that takes into account the view of the other side. This is not that. $LLY. And seriously, @ProfRobHoward, how is this wellconstructured?
The effect of current anti-amyloid drugs vs Alzheimer's disease is "trivial" for cognitive function or dementia severity, not clinically meaningful, from a systematic @cochranecollab review of 17 trials, >20,000 patients cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi…
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