The researcher who is profiled (through his own press release) in the article kindly submitted here appears to have written in 2010 a caution about speculative research. "Ultimately, every cross-disciplinary research niche must achieve a level of maturity. We would characterize maturity as having two defining aspects: First, a respectable level of reproducibility is required, and clear operating procedures using methods accepted by the research community. Secondly, enough repeated experiments have been conducted that broader meta-analyses can be conducted to glean additional or unexpected information about the system. These two aspects, combined, suggest ability and need to begin a process of standardization so that comparisons may be made to assess quality of research, and to bolster the strength of peer review. Ultimately, standardization opens up the avenue for practical engineering."[3] That sounds about right. If we can find replicable results with this approach, then we have something to talk about.
[1] http://timesofsandiego.com/staff/
http://timesofsandiego.com/about/
[2] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
[3] Yonemoto, I. T. and Tippmann, E. M. (2010), The juggernauts of biology. Bioessays, 32: 314–321. doi: 10.1002/bies.200900142
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.200900142/ab...
I guess personally I would consider this to be less of a 'science news cycle' than a 'desperate plea for funding', considering that there are no new results reported in the article.
A typical drug will cost between $1bn-$2bn and take about a decade of work by the time it hits the shelves.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development has details for those interested)
Crowdfunding at those sort of levels just isn't feasible yet.
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/39456/the-z-torqu...
The article talks about the research being patent free, but surely there are options available to fund research that allow this, or am I wrong?
For example it used to be that space programs cost billions, yet India has just put a Mars orbital in place for $74m. I am old enough to remember when it was the received wisdom that people believed an e-commerce website would cost $1m, yet many startups launch their first site with less then 0.1% of that.
How much of that $1bn-$2bn typical cost is open to similar levels of disruption?
But it's not a trivial thing to disrupt, and there are some costs that are just out and out fixed (clinical trials are spendy).
A lot of the costs seem to be linked to the fact that failures are common at every stage. Which is why there is a lot of time, money, and energy being put into reducing failure rates.
There's not an easy "insert disruption here" point.
Most of that $1bn and decade of time is make-work created by ever more risk-averse regulators. The actual process of creating something, making a product, and gathering reasonable data on safety is a fraction of that.
Also drug companies can't just decide they don't want to get FDA approval because it's too much work. They have to work within existing regulations whether they like them or not.
I'm also wondering/suspecting these costs are very much tied to the USA which has a pretty specific model and costs involved.
I wouldn't be surprised if the development, of similar quality, would be much cheaper outside the USA.
(yes i have noticed this guy is crowdfunding from the USA)
majority of drug development is not the actual science work, but tons of paperwork and audit trails. as history has proven if you play fast and loose here a lot of people will be hurt or killed.
you need to document every step along the way. and once clinical trials start, the scrutiny increases, a lot.
there is a now a fast track for very promising breakthrough drugs, but getting this designation is very hard and relies on proven, documented science.
What most people call research grants are nothing of the sort. They are development grants. The research already happened, and it was paid for by bootstrapped philanthropy.
Philanthropic organizations don't generally just hand out money to the person who makes the flashiest video.
Really? Is there a source for this?
"I think there's been a Gresham's Law in science funding in this country, as the political people who are nimble in the art of writing government grants have gradually displaced the eccentric and idiosyncratic people who typically make the best scientists. The eccentric university professor is a species that is going extinct fast." - Peter Thiel [0]
[0]http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g4g95/peter_thiel_tec...
If so, I agree with you, If not, I see here a strong argument for crowd funded projects like that.
This does not go far enough, but it is a good start. It would be better if non-published research were also placed in the public domain, but this is logistically tricky for many reasons.
It may not really be obvious from the outside, but there is a coming crisis in that we won't as a society be able to afford new cancer drugs. It is regularly reported that new drugs which are typically priced around US$120k per year (for multiple years in some cases) are not cost effective. Case in point: crizotonib. This is a drug that works very well at shrinking tumours and controlling disease in incurable lung cancer. It is targeted - it only works if your tumour has a particular gene fusion, which occurs in about 4% of lung cancer patients. It is well tolerated compared to chemotherapy. It's the kind of personalised medicine we are hoping to achieve more broadly in the future. And the way it is priced isn't cost effective [1].
I can guarantee you that the coming surge in immunotherapies will be exorbitantly priced. And these are drugs we will be giving not to 4% of cancer patients, but > 50% of advanced cancer patients in a given tumour type.
These problems are even worse in countries where the government pays for drugs, because they are far more restricted in what they can afford. Patients just end up missing out. And if you think having cancer is bad enough, knowing there is a drug that might help and not being able to afford it is just heart breaking.
So good luck to them, I hope they can draw some money away from nonsense like crowd funding potato salad.
[1] http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2014/02/24/JCO.2013.53...
For example, if public research discovers what triggers cancer cells to multiply, drug companies will scramble to make drugs to prevent it. But the drug company cannot just patent the knowledge about the trigger. If a second drug company finds a second way to prevent the trigger, they can make it, no problem.
Maybe I'm just not aware of direct public funding to drug companies.
good luck doc, you have everything it takes to start moving history in the right direction, right now.
I finished at 11 PM. Cleaned it up, walked across the street to probably one of the world's most respected Cancer Hospitals. Gave it to the MD on staff, he said we'll try it now. Right now.
A lot of things go on when people are at life and death cross roads. Lots of things out of the mainstream. When all hope is gone, sometimes miracles can happen.
Most successful Kickstarter and IndieGoGo campaigns have an extremely narrow market, the early adopters of technology. Cancer casts a wider net by several orders of magnitude. There's no reason to think that, with a good viral marketing campaign, something like this couldn't raise several orders of magnitude more money than the most successful crowdfunding campaigns so far.
Or,
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Sagan
I look forward to a future where one project to cure an ailment is forked, because the project leaders were impeding progress.
