Weekly Dose of Optimism #177

Curation of five stories covering biotech, delivery drones, ocean cleanup, and space internet infrastructure.

Curated Topics

1. Going Founder Mode on Cancer — Elliot Hershberg profiles GitLab founder Sid Sijbrandij’s extraordinary personalized cancer fight using single-cell sequencing, experimental radiotherapy, and a 1000+ page health doc
2. Cancer Vaccine Results — Moderna/Merck mRNA vaccine + Keytruda reduces melanoma death/recurrence risk by 49% in 5-year Phase 2b trial
3. Zipline $600M Raise — Autonomous drone delivery company at $7.6B; 2M+ deliveries; launching Phoenix market
4. Ocean Cleanup Progress — Intercepting 2-5% of global plastic pollution; 27,385 metric tons removed in one year
5. Blue Origin TeraWave — Enterprise satellite constellation: 5,408 satellites, 6 Tbps throughput; space-based dark fiber for enterprises

RDCO-Relevant Items

• Personalized oncology: AI agents + diagnostics pipeline as future of healthcare automation
• TeraWave: enterprise internet backbone infrastructure relevant to data engineering at scale