Omer Khan

Dandy-Walker malformation (DWM) and optic nerve hypoplasia (ONH) are rare congenital anomalies associated with neuropsychiatric morbidity, but their co-occurrence in adults has not been described. We present an adult patient with both DWM and unilateral ONH who developed auditory hypersensitivity, visual agnosia, phonological dyslexia, dysgraphia, and longstanding academic challenges, later evolving into recurrent depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Neuroimaging revealed a Dandy-Walker variant with cerebellar atrophy and ONH, and her presentation was consistent with cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome. Notably, despite the established risk of autism spectrum-like traits in both DWM and ONH, she did not demonstrate autistic features. This case highlights how overlapping congenital anomalies may synergistically increase vulnerability to psychiatric illness and underscores the importance of early recognition and tailored interventions. To our knowledge, this is among the first adult cases describing co-occurring DWM and ONH with a longitudinal psychiatric course.

David Shim sold his first startup for $200M, but when he started Read AI in 2021, he built something that failed spectacularly — 5% retention after 30 days.

James Ashford built GoProposal, a pricing and proposal platform for accountants, on a $5,000 WordPress multisite.

Bilal Aijazi built one of the first Slack apps ever created. The install process was so clunky it required five manual steps of copying and pasting tokens.

Ibby Syed spent 18 months building a customer analytics product that hit $150K ARR—only to realize he'd accidentally built a consulting business, not a software company.

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Bassem Hamdy helped scale Procore to $100M ARR, but his own startup almost failed when investors forced a pivot.

Background: Cannabinoids (CBs) are FDA-approved for mitigating chemotherapy-induced side effects such as pain, nausea, and loss of appetite. Beyond palliative care, CBs exhibit anti-tumor properties in various cancers, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). Previously, we demonstrated the cytotoxic effect of endogenous and exogenous cannabinoids on human and canine B- and T-cell-type NHL cell lines. The purpose of this study was to establish the cytotoxic effect of cannabinoids in combination with the components of CHOP and lomustine. This traditional NHL chemotherapy regimen comprises cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisolone. Methods: In this study, we studied three cannabinoids, one from each of the three major categories of cannabinoids (endocannabinoid AEA, phytocannabinoid CBD, and synthetic cannabinoid WIN-55 212 22). Each cannabinoid was selected based on potency, as determined in our previous experiments. For the combination, we used five NHL chemotherapy drugs. We analyzed the cytotoxicity of each drug alone and in combinations using canine malignant B-type NHL cell line 1771 and a colorimetric MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5 diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) cell proliferation assay and combination index (CI) based on the Chou–Talalay method. Results: Our results demonstrate that the cytotoxic effects of all traditional NHL chemotherapy drugs are synergistically enhanced (interaction with CI < 1) by each of the three cannabinoids at sub-IC50 concentrations. Conclusions: This work provides a proof of concept for using cannabinoids and traditional NHL drugs in combination to reduce the dose, and thereby potentially reducing the toxicity, of chemotherapeutic drugs and increasing the survival benefit in lymphoma clinical translation studies, offering a significant advancement in cancer treatment.

Originally published on my portfolio blog. Zapier, Make, and n8n all promise the same thing —...

Originally published on my portfolio blog. If you've heard of Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat),...