3 replies to this topic

[kmoody]

This post is the result of having gone back and forth a few times with some friends regarding this issue of "open science". A few of my friends are strong supporters of full disclosure in science and medicine in industry, a model which they hope to see as conceptually similar to that of open sourced software (we will ignore this idea of "patents" as a form of disclosure for now). A few of the obvious differences between biological engineering and software engineering are that the latter only requires a computer whereas the former requires tens of thousands of dollars in equipment and reagents, and of course the service aspect. The most successful open source projects typically include a for profit entity, operating as a service provider. The most prominent example of this may be Ubuntu, a popular open source linux distribution, which is supported by Canonical. Canonical does not make money developing or selling Ubuntu directly (like Microsoft does with Windows distributions), but they do make money setting up Ubuntu systems for companies as a service. This seems difficult to model in a biologics setting.

I am sure most of you are generally familiar with this ongoing debate, so I'll pose the major problem to you that my friends fail to resolve. Suppose I had a brilliant idea for a new therapeutic that I wanted to get funded, and to fully develop the product would cost $500,000 (this is a highly conservative hypothetical situation, development of therapeutics often costs on the order of tens of millions if not more, and that does not take into account clinical trials through the FDA which can cost a hundred million). The average MD or PhD does not receive their first federally funded (I.e., NIH) research grant until around age 45. That means on average I would need to wait another 20 years before I can realistically get funding. How would I go about raising $500,000 for this project, given that the success rates of therapeutics is generally abysmal? Philanthropy? Why would someone give me $500,000 out of the goodness of their heart when they can give me $500,000 with the potential of a 1,000 x return? How long do you think that individual would be able to continue to support ideas like mine at $500,000 each if money was never made back on it?

Not to say that there aren't better ways of doing things. I'm all about the best way, and I would be interested to hear a well thought out plan of how fundraising would work in an open science setting. Thoughts?

[Osphran]

I believe the most efficient way to earn these funds would be through government funding. The modification of the political systems takes a change of the population’s paradigm. To do this one needs a media of mass outreach. What needs to be done is advertise a political paradigm that has supports scientific research. To me this is a more efficient method than trying to earn this capitol or to raise it through public donation.

[Mind]

I have to disagree about government funding. It is the least efficient and most costly source of funding. Governments are notoriously corrupt and the money hardly ever goes where the voting populace intends it to go.

Privately funded research is faster and more efficient. The current blend of private/government/university sponsored biological research has worked ok at times, but I would like to see some open source competition for these dollars. The problem, as Kelsi illustrated, is that biological/medical research is very expensive. What about a model where there is distributed community funding (like here at Longecity) and the funders get a cut of the profit, if there is any? In most instances, there would still be a monetary sacrifice by someone, or the group, but for people that have higher/longer term goals, this might not be a big problem - basically charitable giving.

[JonesGuy]

A lot of therapeutics die in pubmed.

Here's my experience. You find a compound that you think 'does something'. You then get a graduate student to make his thesis about this compound 'doing something', and you try to get a proper paper out of it. It's tough, because you're likely working off of some charity or government grant. In that system, the main goal is to publish 'on topic'.

But then your graduate student is gone. You then need to leverage your next graduate student into doing more with the compound, either a new disease model or learning the mechanism by which your compound works. Again, you need the publication out of it, and then your graduate student is gone.

After four years, you have an effect and maybe a half-assed mechanism (there're lots of 'go to' mechanisms which seem to always happen in a protective compound). You can start to look for angel investors or bigger money from the research charities. The goal is to do science 'on the cheap' to qualify for publication, but you are also deadly scared of getting a non-result. A non-result is certainly *science* but it scares away investors.

And then, after 4 years, you finally do a head-to-head experiment with a proper model of the disease, and realise that your compound is not as effective as you'd been hoping. What do you do then? Well, you tweak the compound, and get your next graduate student to test a variety of similar compounds in your first animals models.

Yeah, it's depressing (when viewed at the macro). When you're in it, though, it's tons of fun. Especially if you're in it for the science.