Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI are backing an effort to stop respiratory infections
Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI are backing an effort to stop respiratory infections
Stripe、Anthropic 和 OpenAI 联手支持旨在终结呼吸道感染的计划
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The common cold comes for us all—often more than once a year. And there is no way to prevent it. The best you can do is take vitamin C and stay away from people with the sniffles. 执行摘要：普通感冒几乎每个人都会遇到，而且往往一年不止一次。目前还没有预防它的方法。你所能做的最好的事情就是服用维生素 C，并远离那些流鼻涕的人。
Now the payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new $500 million nonprofit whose goal is preventing both the common cold and the flu. Its eventual aim is to get rid of respiratory viruses altogether. 现在，由 Patrick 和 John Collison 兄弟创立的支付公司 Stripe 表示，将资助一家新的非营利组织，投入 5 亿美元，旨在预防普通感冒和流感。其最终目标是彻底消除呼吸道病毒。
The new organization, called Intercept, will use grants and investments to back prevention approaches, including vaccines, as well as large-scale air-cleaning systems for schools, offices, and other public spaces. 这个名为 Intercept 的新组织将通过拨款和投资来支持各种预防手段，包括疫苗，以及用于学校、办公室和其他公共场所的大规模空气净化系统。
In addition to Stripe, other funders include Anthropic, Flu Lab, and the OpenAI Foundation, as well as Bill Gates and several traders at the quantitative investing fund Jane Street Capital, according to an Intercept spokesperson. 据 Intercept 发言人称，除了 Stripe 之外，其他资助者还包括 Anthropic、Flu Lab、OpenAI 基金会，以及比尔·盖茨和量化投资基金 Jane Street Capital 的几位交易员。
“I think we treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but have really underweighted the burden that they impose on society,” says Nan Ransohoff, the Stripe executive leading the initiative along with Charlie Petty, a venture capitalist who joined Stripe this year. “我认为我们一直把呼吸道感染视为一种小麻烦，但实际上严重低估了它们给社会带来的负担，”Stripe 高管 Nan Ransohoff 说道。她与今年加入 Stripe 的风险投资家 Charlie Petty 共同领导了这一倡议。
On average, people spend 5% of their lifetime fighting a cold or the flu, according to Ransohoff. Despite that, drug companies put relatively little effort into preventing colds. 据 Ransohoff 称，人们平均一生中 5% 的时间都在与感冒或流感作斗争。尽管如此，制药公司在预防感冒方面的投入却相对较少。
Part of the problem is that the sniffles are caused by more than 200 different viruses, according to the American Lung Association, with rhinoviruses being the most common culprits. There are so many that it typically doesn’t pay to try to stop any one of them with a vaccine. 美国肺脏协会指出，部分问题在于感冒是由 200 多种不同的病毒引起的，其中鼻病毒是最常见的罪魁祸首。由于病毒种类繁多，试图用疫苗去针对其中任何一种通常都不划算。
“When pharma companies look at it, it’s not as attractive as other things they could work on,” says Ransohoff. “So it hasn’t attracted the resources.” “当制药公司审视这个问题时，会发现它不如其他研究项目那样具有吸引力，”Ransohoff 说，“因此，它一直没有吸引到足够的资源。”
Stripe previously organized a $1.8 billion program called Frontier to encourage the development of carbon removal technology, as a way of countering climate change. Ransohoff says removing carbon from the atmosphere and getting rid of respiratory viruses are similar in that each is “technically possible” but they “lack commercial incentives.” Stripe 此前曾组织过一个名为 Frontier 的 18 亿美元项目，旨在鼓励碳去除技术的发展，以应对气候变化。Ransohoff 表示，从大气中去除碳和消除呼吸道病毒有相似之处，即两者在“技术上都是可能的”，但都“缺乏商业激励”。
The concept for Intercept took shape after Ransohoff started talking to David Veesler, a structural biologist and vaccine designer at the University of Washington, who argued that it’s possible to come up with broad countermeasures that work against many viruses at once. Intercept 的构想是在 Ransohoff 与华盛顿大学结构生物学家兼疫苗设计师 David Veesler 交谈后形成的。Veesler 认为，完全有可能开发出能够同时对抗多种病毒的广泛对策。
“He effectively sort of nerd-sniped me,” Ransohoff says of Veesler. “He convinced me that this is technically possible. He also helped me understand that some of the reasons that this hasn’t been done before was sort of an incentive problem.” “他实际上是用技术难题‘诱惑’了我，”Ransohoff 在谈到 Veesler 时说，“他让我相信这在技术上是可行的。他还让我明白，以前之所以没人做这件事，某种程度上是因为激励机制的问题。”
Veesler says the growing tool kit available to scientists includes RNA drugs, antibodies, and computational protein design. For instance, one idea is to engineer virus-grabbing proteins that people could spray in their nasal passages, to catch viruses before they cause infection. Veesler 表示，科学家们目前拥有的工具箱日益丰富，包括 RNA 药物、抗体和计算蛋白质设计。例如，一个构想是设计出能够捕捉病毒的蛋白质，人们可以将其喷入鼻腔，在病毒引发感染之前将其拦截。
“Most people just accept these viruses as a fact of life, and that got us thinking: Do we have to accept it?” says Veesler. “The more we thought about it, the more we realized that many of these problems have not been worked on with modern technologies.” “大多数人只是把这些病毒视为生活的一部分，这让我们开始思考：我们必须接受这一点吗？”Veesler 说，“我们思考得越多，就越意识到许多这类问题并没有利用现代技术去解决。”
The project takes inspiration from efforts to fight the covid-19 virus, where Veesler’s group was among those involved in the speedy development of vaccines, antiviral drugs, and antibodies. 该项目从抗击新冠病毒的努力中汲取了灵感，Veesler 的团队曾参与了当时疫苗、抗病毒药物和抗体的快速开发工作。
According to Ransohoff, Intercept’s advisors will include Peter Marks, a former top FDA official, as well as Moncef Slaoui, the pharmaceutical executive who led the US coronavirus vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed. 据 Ransohoff 介绍，Intercept 的顾问将包括前美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）高级官员 Peter Marks，以及曾领导美国新冠疫苗计划“曲速行动”（Operation Warp Speed）的制药高管 Moncef Slaoui。
A key challenge for Intercept will be coming up with ways to counter many viruses at one time. That accounts for the interest in air-cleaning technology, such as using strong ultraviolet light to inactivate viruses. The idea, the group says, is to remove them from the air in the same way municipalities remove impurities from the water supply before it’s piped to people’s homes. Intercept 面临的一个关键挑战是如何找到同时对抗多种病毒的方法。这就是他们对空气净化技术感兴趣的原因，例如使用强紫外线来灭活病毒。该组织表示，其理念就像市政部门在将水输送到居民家中之前去除水中的杂质一样，将病毒从空气中清除。
The US funds about $6.5 billion a year in virus research through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, or NIAID. But that agency’s budget hasn’t grown in recent years, leaving more room for private philanthropy. 美国通过国家过敏和传染病研究所（NIAID）每年资助约 65 亿美元的病毒研究。但该机构的预算近年来没有增长，这为私人慈善事业留下了更多空间。
And Stripe’s Collison brothers have become some of the most reliable philanthropists in viral research. After giving away “fast grants” to help labs during the covid-19 pandemic, they later joined other donors who committed $650 million to establish the Arc Institute in Palo Alto, California, which has developed AI models for biological research. Stripe 的 Collison 兄弟已成为病毒研究领域最可靠的慈善家之一。在新冠疫情期间，他们发放了“快速拨款”以帮助实验室，随后又与其他捐赠者共同出资 6.5 亿美元，在加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托建立了 Arc 研究所，该研究所目前已开发出用于生物研究的 AI 模型。
“The diversity of viruses is just too large and seems daunting, so people don’t even try,” says Veesler. “I’m happy that someone is ready to help scientists, not accepting the status quo, and doing something different.” “病毒的多样性太大了，看起来令人望而生畏，所以人们甚至不去尝试，”Veesler 说，“我很高兴有人愿意帮助科学家，不接受现状，并做出一些不同的尝试。”