The reviews are in! "I heard it just now! So good 😊" – my mom "Just listened to the new insulin episode and loved it." – @rossaokod.bsky.social "you should have added 5 more minutes on how early researchers checked for the sweetness of animal urine..." – @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social

1/3 As someone diagnosed as Type 1 in 1976, I can remember beginning on porcine insulin (bovine was another alternative). The first "human" insulin I had was actually enzymatically modified porcine. I started with glass syringes, with exchangeable all metal needles, stored in methylated spirit.

Last episode: an introduction to what proteins are This episode: proteins can be medicines! Insulin is a protein. 104 years ago, no one with diabetes had been injected with it, then came insulin from animals, then came bioreactors...

Saloni and Jacob have a natural way to make everything sound like it’s the coolest thing in the world, so naturally I’m now all on board of the protein train 🚂

AI for protein design won a Nobel Prize last year. Are new protein drugs to cure diseases on their way? This episode introduces what proteins are. You can listen to it on its own, or as the first plank of us answering that question. Subscribe in a podcast app for future planks!

Over the weekend I published an essay series on a question I've been thinking about for a while: What does AI progress mean for medical progress? It starts with this 500 word piece. If you want more after that, there are 10,000 words of forking paths: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ai-progress-...

The Abundance and Growth Fund at Open Philanthropy is hiring! We’re looking for 2-4 people to help expand this new $120+ million program to accelerate economic growth and reduce the cost of living through strategic grantmaking and research. (1/4) www.openphilanthropy.org/research/ann...

Periodic reminder of this article by @jacobtref.bsky.social: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/10-technolog...

In the 1980s, many thought tuberculosis was on the path to elimination. In reality, more were dying from the disease than ever. The second article in our series on Tuberculosis: ourworldindata.org/the-end-of-t...

I am thankful every day for the work of scientists working to cure HIV/AIDS. We come such a long way. I lost some amazing people to AIDS and they are missed every single day. I am so happy that this heartbreak can now be avoided thanks to these antivirals. I still have hope for a cure one day.

Excellent piece on some of the scientists behind lenacapavir, the HIV antiviral that could be scaled up to change the course of the HIV epidemic worldwide.

Great article on the origins of lenacapavir, the amazingly effective HIV prevention drug approved by the FDA last week: bsky.app/profile/sta...

See, it only takes two weeks to finish, and then you're free... free to start the follow on reading... Go on, why not start listening today... 😈 open.spotify.com/show/7CgKi9l...

Listen to Saloni’s podcast if you want a 5hr drug discovery overview so good it made me cry at multiple points

U.S. FDA approves #lenacapavir (to be sold as Yeztugo), a twice-a-year shot hailed as the closest thing the field has ever had to a #HIV vaccine, by @jasonmast.bsky.social, Ed Silverman www.statnews.com/2025/06/18/f... via @statnews.com #AIDS

A bit of positive news today. FDA has just approved Lenacapavir for PrEP in the US. In clinical trials one injection every 6 months was close to 100% effective in preventing HIV transmission. PrEP is for everyone who needs it. www.usatoday.com/story/news/h...

🚨🚨 Lenacapavir FDA approved today, twice-yearly shot preventing HIV 🚨🚨 It's now possible to drive down transmission everywhere, and win against the AIDS epidemic, with other long-lasting drugs in trials too Here's the story of how scientists got here, 44 years of hard work:

What’s the return on government support for R&D? To try to get a credible answer, Open Philanthropy and the Sloan Foundation are committing up to $1 million to trying something new: we call it a Pop-Up Journal.

I take everything back at [3:13:03] @scientificdiscovery.dev once again starts spreading anti-grapefruit propaganda. It’s the greatest fruit out there!!! Don’t let concerns about interactions with *checks notes* pretty much any medication get in between you and grapefruits!

If little funny anecdotes have a million fans, I am one. If funny asides have one fan, it is me. If little funny anecdotes and asides have no fans, I am dead.

Great video from @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social on PEPFAR and the Global Fund, and the stakes of HIV/AIDS funding:

I feel like I'm in this situation where I have talented friends that I love and respect so much that it surprises me to learn that they seem to feel the same way 🥺 blog.jacobtrefethen.com/lenacapavir/

#Lenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end #AIDS. The new #HIV drug blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%. The "Hard Drugs" podcast w/ @scientificdiscovery.dev @jacobtref.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/4nIj...

This was an incredibly interesting story about how amazing it is we now have a treatment for HIV, and the complexities of drug development. It is basically 5 episodes of an hour released at once. Extremely educational - haven't listened to anything where I learned so much in 5 hours in a while!

unironically, i think putting out long form content like this is the real ballsy resistance to the fragmentation of attention. long stuff reminds people there's something to get from paying sustained attention.

this was excellent. a highly recommended way to spend 5 hours.

New post, this time poetry instead of science: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/lenacapavir/

i'm listening to the saloni and jacob podcast, so far what ive gathered is that an enzyme is a protein with a particularly stressful job

Of all the nice reviews we've had to our podcast, this was the one that made me truly feel "mission accomplished" 🥹

This is a super long video, but i'm really proud to have worked on it. It's @worksinprogress.bsky.social's new podcast Hard Drugs - and this episode is all about a potential breakthrough in HIV prevention - the new drug Lenacapavir. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVhi...

Science is never more amazing than when it promises eradication of diseases. Really enjoyed Hard Drugs, the first @worksinprogress.bsky.social podcast. Give these guys a listen!

So excited that Open Phil is partnering with Works in Progress on this new podcast from ‪@jacobtref.bsky.social and @scientificdiscovery.dev‬! bsky.app/profile/sci...

It’s the Aquired podcast format applied to drug discovery. That’s a very good thing.

Our new podcast ad podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

If a 5 hour long podcast scares you; you can easily listen to that one more like an audiobook in chapters. I'm an hour in and have already learned *so much* about HIV, but also cool genetics stuff.

Me: “FIVE hours?” Also me: <hits the “subscribe” button>

I feel like podcast episodes get longer as the show goes on, so someone should start a prediction market on how long the first 5 episodes will be on average. Non-zero chance episode 5 could be like 15 hours (of awesomeness).

So excited to share what Saloni and I have been up to. Medical innovation is not inevitable. Sometimes breakthroughs take 40 years, thousands of people building on each others’ work & participating in clinical trials. Check out ep 1, and subscribe for more Hard Drugs! harddrugs.worksinprogress.co

New blog post, on 52 pieces of science writing I've learned from over the last two years. Thank you, from one reader, to all the authors! blog.jacobtrefethen.com/science-writ...

Tuberculosis still kills around 1.3 million people every year. It was once a massive killer in Europe and the US, but not anymore. How did these countries manage to tackle it? Our first article on TB in a three-part series: ourworldindata.org/tuberculosis...

I wrote a new piece with Rafael Dib on prioritisation in science funding. How should a grantmaker aiming at health impact pick areas to fund, when science is so hard to predict? We argue you can get pretty far, because today's spending is weird: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/vaccines/

Very excited to welcome ‪‪@justsand.bsky.social to Open Phil as the inaugural leader of our new program devoted to accelerating economic growth in developing countries, where he'll allocate over $30m over the next 3 years www.openphilanthropy.org/research/in...

Wonderful & detailed piece as always from Saloni. The philosophical issue she discusses comes up a lot when we try to prioritise across interventions at @openphil.bsky.social - should we fund scientists making hep B drugs, or medical schools training hepatologists, or hep B screening programs, or..?

New blog post going into @seqh2o.bsky.social and team’s inventions — which add the right amount of chlorine to disinfect water at places people collect it — and why we decided to support the work in 2020: www.openphilanthropy.org/research/how...

Impressive effort mapping gaps across 100 areas of science and technology to work on. I’m going to make a big pot of coffee and click around:

The main strep conference is held just once every 3 years -- Lancefield. It's coming up in June: www.lisssd2025.org Sign up, even if (especially if!) you've never worked in the field but are interested in learning about it. Among other reasons to attend, @malaria-kat.bsky.social will be there... 👀

Still no strep A vaccine... time.com/7276379/inva...

I signed the 10% Giving Pledge this year, and this week, I decided to donate 19% of my annual income to global health charities. It's not going to be anywhere near "enough", but I'm happy to do it --

Enjoying the new GiveWell podcast so far. Two episodes in: givewell.transistor.fm