Sarrin Chethik retweeted
.@WashingtonPost: A smarter way to fund scientific discovery
washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
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Sarrin Chethik retweeted
If you’re interested in how pull funding, prizes, or advance market commitments could work for drug repurposing, my colleagues and I have thought/written a lot more about the practical details. DM me and/or read more here: tinyurl.com/2w5c5vms.
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Drug repurposing is having a moment. @US_FDA released an RFI, and @salonium/@JacobTref discuss ways to fix missing incentives, including push funding (paying upfront) + pull funding (paying based on outcomes). Jacob concludes, “Let’s do both.” That’s exactly the right attitude.
New episode of HARD DRUGS!
Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight?
GLP-1 drugs have transformed diabetes and obesity, can help treat heart disease, kidney disease, sleep apnea, and may also work against dementia.
But they’re far from the only medicine with more multiple uses. Aspirin, colchicine, minoxidil, Botox, and, famously, Viagra were all found to treat more conditions than expected. (Did you know that BCG vaccines are used to treat bladder cancer?)
In fact, about a third of FDA-approved small molecule drugs are later approved for a second use.
But sometimes, it takes several decades - and public funding - to learn whether existing drugs could work for more conditions.
Moxidectin, for example, went untested for human diseases for decades; we now know that it can cure ~70% of whipworm infections in kids. Aspirin was used for over a century before we found it had cardiovascular benefits.
Why? The commercial incentive to test further is time-limited: once a drug goes off-patent and generics can enter, drug developers can get undercut, so it’s no longer worth it to run expensive clinical trials to test other uses.
The problem is even larger for tropical diseases, which are often not profitable to treat in the first place.
The result is that we’re missing out on knowing about a lot of additional uses of already-approved drugs!
There may be more miracle drugs hiding in plain sight. And economists estimate the ‘missing innovation’ would be worth 100 to 400 billion dollars in social value annually(!)
How do we solve this?
In this episode, @JacobTref and I chat about all the above and more!
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Surely some of that dispersed knowledge exists in the famously guarded pharmaceutical industry (i.e., unpublished trial data, real-world evidence).
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If you’re interested in how pull funding, prizes, or advance market commitments could work for drug repurposing, my colleagues and I have thought/written a lot more about the practical details. DM me and/or read more here: tinyurl.com/2w5c5vms.
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Sarrin Chethik retweeted
Models suggest we could see ~3 COVID-scale pandemics this century. COVID showed that recovery slows and access suffers when vaccine manufacturing capacity is limited. Nearly a year after authorizations, only 9% of Africans were fully vaccinated. How do we avoid this bottleneck?
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In DCP4 Vol. 2, we summarize how governments, foundations, and multilateral orgs can make smarter vaccine investments before and during pandemics. Here are five recommendations 🧵
#DCP4 Vol 2 highlights essential health system investments, #PublicHealth measures, and medical countermeasures to help countries prepare for and respond to future #pandemics.
📗Learn more and explore all chapters: wrld.bg/3usC50XuucQ
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5/ Finally, use vaccines efficiently. Prioritize high-risk groups and consider fractional dosing. One estimate found vaccinating the highest-risk 20% could cut COVID mortality by 80%.
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Vaccine development is not just about science. It’s about strategically investing in R&D and manufacturing capacity. Read more details here: tinyurl.com/4tjas2s2
+ great working w @rglenner, Catherine Che, @clairetmcmahon, and Christopher Snyder on this
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If you have expertise in auction design (esp electricity capacity markets), I'd be very curious what you think of EU HERA's vaccine capacity contracts or optimal design of vaccine/other countermeasure capacity markets in general 👀
2/ Also in preparation, pay for “warm” vaccine manufacturing capacity and the workforce needed to run it. We already do something similar in the electricity sector, where “capacity markets” help ensure there’s enough reserve energy generation available for very hot days.
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I imagine there's lots to learn from brilliant research on resilience in other sectors! @knowledgeprob, @NataliaFabra, @jacob_mays, etc.
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More on EU's vaccine capacity markets here: tinyurl.com/42nwae2y
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