3 ms·

This question is tangential, but why do you think it is that there are so many people in the "new philanthropist" class who do have the money to fund such resea

by smeej 5y ago

This question is tangential, but why do you think it is that there are so many people in the "new philanthropist" class who do have the money to fund such research privately, but instead partner with the big pharma companies? If the costs for these types of solutions can be SO much lower, it surprises me that there isn't a more robust subculture working on it with money they've made when their last tech startups went public. Almost everybody knows somebody with a rare or expensive-to-treat disease, right? Is it just too early? Are we only just learning how to figure out exactly which mutations cause exactly the wrong protein production errors in the cells, and then can assess the effects of off-patent generics to treat them? Or is there more to it than that? I only learned about Medikanren[0] a couple weeks ago, and since this isn't my field, immediately felt like I was behind on some very important knowledge, and I'm fascinated by the thought of trying to figure out how to address this problem by thinking this far outside the big pharma box. It reminds me of FOSS in that the funding challenges may be similar, but for treating disease. [0] https://github.com/webyrd/mediKanren https://github.com/webyrd/mediKanren

savvak 5y ago
Currently, private pharmaceutical drug development is seen through the patent lens because there is no other way create a scalable business model. What is needed is to convince payers (e.g. health insurers, govt, or philanthropy) to back pay for success contracts and agree to purchase valuable off-patent RCT data rather than just RCT data involving a new patented drug which is capable of being monopolised. Without that, there is no market and no way to leverage this arbitrage opportunity. This would allow tools such as Medikanren and other AI and personalised medicine approaches to drug discovery to be properly utilised. Doctors need RCTs to know which drugs are safe and effective and unfortunately, those RCTs are expensive, which creates a market failure if there is no ROI possible with patents. You can't solve a market failure with direct public funding, it's too inefficient. You need to update the social contracts to create a new market. You are correct, it's the same "public goods" problem for FOSS projects, but for medicines, and uses a "bounty" model to solve it, but has not been implemented to date.

by smeej 5y ago

savvak 5y ago

Currently, private pharmaceutical drug development is seen through the patent lens because there is no other way create a scalable business model. What is needed is to convince payers (e.g. health insurers, govt, or philanthropy) to back pay for success contracts and agree to purchase valuable off-patent RCT data rather than just RCT data involving a new patented drug which is capable of being monopolised. Without that, there is no market and no way to leverage this arbitrage opportunity. This would allow tools such as Medikanren and other AI and personalised medicine approaches to drug discovery to be properly utilised. Doctors need RCTs to know which drugs are safe and effective and unfortunately, those RCTs are expensive, which creates a market failure if there is no ROI possible with patents. You can't solve a market failure with direct public funding, it's too inefficient. You need to update the social contracts to create a new market. You are correct, it's the same "public goods" problem for FOSS projects, but for medicines, and uses a "bounty" model to solve it, but has not been implemented to date.