#smartflares

What do scientific prizes celebrate?

Another scientific prize has been awarded to Chad Mirkin for his work on oligonucleotide-modified gold nanoparticles (or Spherical Nucleic Acids, aka SNAs, as Mirkin calls them since 2012)… whilst SNA company Exicure continues on its “death spiral“. The prize is the 2023 King Faisal Prize (KFP) in Medicine and Science. The KFP and Northwestern press releases show a certain disconnect from…

Allegations of research improprieties at Spherical Nucleic Acids company Exicure

Last Tuesday, Twitter user @NanoSkeptic drew my attention to a report by the company Exicure that develops biomedical applications of Spherical Nucleic Acids. Exicure was founded in 2011 by David Giljohann, Chad Mirkin and Shad Thaxton. Don’t look now, but $XCUR just filed a 12b-25. “alleged research improprieties”https://t.co/bCeiHXXRkq— Nano_Skeptic (@NanoSkeptic) November 16, 2021…

At the 2018 American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston, I asked a question to Chad Mirkin after his talk on Spherical Nucleic Acids. This is what I said:

In science, we need to share the bad news as well as the good news. In your introduction you mentioned four clinical trials. One of them has reported. It showed no efficacy and Purdue Pharma which was supposed to develop the drug…