5 ms·
The nytimes article mentions: "The research was paid for by the National Institutes of Health and the German government (some co-authors work at the University
by _craft 12y ago
The nytimes article mentions:
"The research was paid for by the National Institutes of Health and the German government (some co-authors work at the University of Bonn). Northeastern University holds a patent on the method of producing drugs and licensed the patent to a private company, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, in Cambridge, Mass., which owns the rights to any compounds produced. Dr. Lewis is a paid consultant to the company."
If the research was paid for by the National Institutes of Health, why is the patent privately owned? This does not seem fair to taxpayers.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- skosuri 12y agoThis is not only allowed, it's encouraged by legislation called the Bayh-Dole Act. The general thought is that there would be no incentive for anyone to do clinical trials on the drug, which can get quite expensive, if they don't have some protection for exclusive use. Many, if not most drugs proceed starting from academic research funded by governmental support.
- _craft 12y agoThanks for the informative response! Do you know how expensive clinical trials would be for this kind of drug?
- skosuri 12y ago$100M-500M gets thrown around [1] but it's hard to find good data. This might seem not too high, but many drugs fail, and often fail at the most costly step (phase III). So you have to be sure to factor that failure rate in. [1] http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/fda_05.htm http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/fda_05.htm
- refurb 12y agoDepends on what indication they are trying to get. A handy estimate is that a phase III trial costs $15K/person/year. If they aim for a 1000 person trial of 6 month duration, you're looking at $15M just for the phase 3 (I doubled it since they typically run two). However, that's a small trial.
- Fomite 12y agoFidaxomycin, which was developed by Optimer Pharmaceuticals to treat C. difficle, was relatively inexpensive to run. I want to say in the vicinity of $100 million
- refurb 12y agoI'll also add that the educational institute who received the government funds out-licenses the drug while maintaining a royalty interest in it. Lyrica came out of Northwestern and they build a brand new, shiny chemistry building out of the royalties.
- s_q_b 12y agoWhy is that bad? Shouldn't the discoverers of pregabalin, who helped millions in excruciating incurable chronic pain, receive a portion of the profit from the sales of the drug to build facilities for future research? That seems like a well-formed feedback loop to me.
- _craft 12y agoHow much of that goes to the actual researchers vs the school?
- skosuri 12y agoDepends on the school. The general rule of thumb is about 1/3rd to the inventors themselves, 1/3rd to the department, 1/3 to the school.
- scott_karana 12y agoCynically, even if the school gets 100% of the profits, the feedback loop of "encourage drug development, get paid" functions properly. They would only have to pay their researchers just enough to continue working...
- refurb 12y agoThe guy at Northwestern who discovered Lyrica is a multimillionaire. The incoming royalties are usually split between the researcher and school.
- refurb 12y agoI'm not saying it's bad at all! I'm just pointing out that the academics who invent something and pass it to a biotech company for development get something in return!
- throwaway2048 12y agoDo note companies have a very strong incentive to make clinical trials as expensive as possible for this, and other reasons.
- cyrus9020 12y agoCompanies have a very strong incentive to make it expensive? Can you expand on that?
- majormajor 12y agoMy naive instinct is that there should be some sort of split, not just having the university hold the full patent and income resulting from it, but I do think there should be some sweat equity for the researchers. Similar to how if you're raising money for a company, you don't have to sell your entire stake. (This gets weird with the distinction between the researchers and the university as well, but that's a separate issue.)
- cmsmith 12y agoOften university patent agreements are flexible, but agreements like 1/3 to research team, 1/3 to university (with some set aside for the hosting department), and 1/3 to the funding agency (depending on what's allowed by law) are not atypical.
- javiramos 12y agoA successful company will pay back the government many multiples of its investment in the form of corporate and income taxes. Also, financial incentives incentivize entrepreneurs to make the venture successful. Imagine the government taking over the commercialization of the drug...
- briantakita 12y agoThe profit motive also motivates people to externalize & rationalize effects on the environment & the public at large.
- hga 12y agoNo, harsh experience with Communist, socialist and Fascist regimes shows this is a universal human problem, with far worse e.g. environmental results. If you have independent companies do stuff, the government(s) they operate under, and people using the mechanisms of those governments, tend to check them. The alternatives remove those checks altogether.
- briantakita 12y agoConsolidating power tends to cause these sort of issues. It doesn't matter what the label of the system is, Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Capitalist. While capitalism "won" these battles in the past and is better than authoritarianism, at the present moment, capitalism is destroying us all. Our version of capitalism is the new authoritarian regime evolving toward fascism. Like any authoritarian regime, our capitalism has effective marketing & it's believers. "She died a famous woman denying her wounds; denying her wounds came from the same source as her power" -- Power, by Adrienne Rich (About Marie Curie) So the answer is not as simple as sprinkling some "capitalism" on it. We need more love of self & others, more transparency, more equality, environmental protection, systemic design, awareness of the impact of our actions, awareness of politics, decentralization, less emphasis on money and more emphasis on community, etc. "If you name me, you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all of the other things I could possibly be." -- Søren Kierkegaard. The answer is not a label. The answer is our actions. That is who we are.
- philwelch 12y agoThere are years of work and millions of dollars between discovering or inventing a chemical that seems to have a certain health benefit and having a safe, thoroughly tested drug ready for manufacturing. It's the difference between science and engineering.