2 ms·

Suppose for one second that all these people are profit motivated. Whatever research money there is, there is far far far more to be had for the patent royaltie

Suppose for one second that all these people are profit motivated. Whatever research money there is, there is far far far more to be had for the patent royalties from treatments. Not even close. So much more money to be made from treatment than from research. And there is so much money to be had from beating a competitor with a better treatment than there is to have an equivalent treatment Taking a cynical profit-only driven view of the world would optimize for better cancer care. But nobody goes into it "aha I want to make a lot of money." They might go into it wanting to get famous for coming up with a cancer cure. But take the cures that are most closely associated with individuals, whether it's a drug targeting BCR-ABL1 fusions or HER2, and almost nobody knows their name. So even then the fame motive is pretty weak.

xk_id 2y ago
> Taking a cynical profit-only driven view of the world would optimize for better cancer care. There are many promising research directions, which are however grossly underexplored, either because there is a low chance it might lead to a positive result, or because it cannot be patented even if it's successful. Examples in the latter category include off-label use of established procedures, or of already known drugs. Conversely, the majority of money and energy is being spent on highly predictable research and which can result in a patent; almost always the downside is low impact. So as you can see, profit optimisation is not correlated with impact optimisation.
- epistasis 2y ago
  Calling off-label repurposing of established drugs "under explored" is a bit insulting to all those people that attempt it all the time, without a higher success rate than any other method. Folks like Razelle Kuzrock make great progress, and the "under exploration" is more about not spending enough time exploring RNA or protein diagnostics rather than DNA diagnostics, if anything. Which isn't due to lack of impact or profit optimization, just due to intuition biases of the field. Calling profit and impact optimization "uncorrelated" is not justified by your comment. The biggest impact in the past decade of cancer has undoubtedly been immunotherapies, which are also by far hugely profitable. And immunotherapies themselves were often a backwater, far more so than drug repurposing, until the impact came through with a patented drug.
  - peerless-app 2y ago
    Good to see a shoutout to Kurzrock!

xk_id 2y ago

> Taking a cynical profit-only driven view of the world would optimize for better cancer care. There are many promising research directions, which are however grossly underexplored, either because there is a low chance it might lead to a positive result, or because it cannot be patented even if it's successful. Examples in the latter category include off-label use of established procedures, or of already known drugs. Conversely, the majority of money and energy is being spent on highly predictable research and which can result in a patent; almost always the downside is low impact. So as you can see, profit optimisation is not correlated with impact optimisation.

epistasis 2y ago
Calling off-label repurposing of established drugs "under explored" is a bit insulting to all those people that attempt it all the time, without a higher success rate than any other method. Folks like Razelle Kuzrock make great progress, and the "under exploration" is more about not spending enough time exploring RNA or protein diagnostics rather than DNA diagnostics, if anything. Which isn't due to lack of impact or profit optimization, just due to intuition biases of the field. Calling profit and impact optimization "uncorrelated" is not justified by your comment. The biggest impact in the past decade of cancer has undoubtedly been immunotherapies, which are also by far hugely profitable. And immunotherapies themselves were often a backwater, far more so than drug repurposing, until the impact came through with a patented drug.
- peerless-app 2y ago
  Good to see a shoutout to Kurzrock!