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Only the Strong Survive

Only the Strong Survive


"THE WEAK WILL PERISH."If you're looking for an intimidating racial ethos, Species 8472's is a doozy — the only one in the Star Trek universe that holds a candle to the Borg's "Resistance is futile." And it's not just a lot of tough talk: Species 8472 can survive exposure to a vacuum, have an immune system that can be charitably described as "psychotic," and fly around in ships that can pull off the Death Star-style party trick of linking energy beams to destroy entire planets.







This program strives to discover host tolerance mechanisms in order to identify a suite of interventions suitable for use in humans to mitigate the deleterious effects of infectious diseases. THoR is seeking novel methods and technologies to discover and understand these responses in hosts that are resilient when exposed to infectious diseases. Specifically, DARPA aims to discover the fundamental biological relationships that underlie host tolerance to infection in animal populations in order to provide the foundational knowledge required to develop interventions for potential transition into clinical use. This program is organized into three Technical Areas (TAs): 1) Identification and characterization of animal hosts with tolerant phenotypes; 2) Discovery of biological mechanisms that underlie tolerance; and 3) Identification of interventions that utilize tolerance mechanisms with the goal of reducing morbidity and mortality due to infection.
























Jon Sung is a contributing writer for XPRIZE and copywriting gun-for-hire to startups and ventures all over the San Francisco Bay area. When not wrangling words for business or pleasure, he serves as the captain of the USS Loma Prieta, the hardest-partying
fan club in San Francisco.


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