Panel, Conference Presentation
Chasing Cures: Reinventing the Business of Medicine
Milken InstituteMelissa Stevens, John Noseworthy, Francis Collins, Mark Rothera, Melinda Richter, Monsef Slaoui
- The current 15-year medical research process is deemed unsustainable and requires a fundamental shift toward a unified "basketball team" collaborative approach replacing individual efforts.
- New initiatives like the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) and PCORI aim to identify drug targets for Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, with PCORI potentially covering 20 million lives in real-world studies within a decade.
- John Noseworthy plans to build relationships with 200 million patients by 2020 through data codification and the integration of big data to replicate large randomized trials at a fraction of the cost.
- Digital sensors and devices are expected to provide granular endpoints for clinical trials, potentially allowing commercial availability after short trials followed by real-life assessment, though this transparency presents industry challenges.
- Monsef Slaoui predicts a 10-year transition where medicines evolve from chemical molecules to electrical signals delivered via nanochips on nerves, alongside a 30-year development of a malaria vaccine expected to save tens of millions of lives annually in sub-Saharan Africa.
- A "universal influenza vaccine" protecting against seasonal flu and future pandemics is anticipated within the next 10 years, while a major international initiative to map human brain circuits to address conditions like schizophrenia and autism is expected over the next decade or more.
- Nonprofit patient organizations are predicted to increasingly finance companies and assume significant R&D roles, while a renegotiation among companies, regulators, and payers regarding evidence requirements aims to reduce time, lower prices, and speed patient access.
- Without systemic changes, the current rate of 10 new orphan drugs per year would require over 500 years to treat the 95% of rare diseases currently lacking treatments.
- Funding for young investigators at the NIH is projected to remain the worst in memory unless the "innovation deficit" is addressed, and biomedical research funding must be removed from the discretionary budget to avoid a "slow motion" progression.
- Financial models such as reinvesting the 5% margin from malaria vaccine sales in sub-Saharan Africa into neglected tropical disease discoveries, and leveraging a $200 billion annual healthcare waste reduction through public transparency, are anticipated strategies.
- The industry's high-tech transformation "sweet spot" is expected to remain years away, and while AMP data will be made accessible to those with good ideas, PCORI usage for phase two or three trials is currently unconfirmed.