Partnering for Cures // Innovator Presentations // Harnessing the Serendipity of Science

Panels

Session 3: Harnessing the Serendipity of Science
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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
9:30 am - 10:25 am

Moderator Debra Lappin, president of the Council for American Medical Innovation, set the stage for this discussion by pointing out that the medical research community is in a period of enormous change and pressure. "There is a new societal demand for return on investment," she said. "Congress wants to show what they are getting for $30 billion, while we in the sector are trying to focus on showing a return on innovation – how the dollars we are investing get paid in human health." As we move from blockbusters to biologically stratified personalized medicine, she asked, what platforms are in place to stimulate scientific discovery?

Panelists agreed that there needs to be more cooperation and openness among researchers and better access to information – what if the cure for one disease is sitting on a lab bench because it failed to cure another disease?

Dr. Samuel Silverstein of Columbia University and the Damon Runyon Cancer Foundation talked about the value of human capital in both caring for patients and understanding what drives disease. He highlighted the importance of workforce training – encouraging young doctors to go into clinical research fields – and called for more focus on, and incentives for, young investigators. "We need to give them opportunities to use their best ideas," he said. One such example is the work Damon Runyon is doing with the NIH clinical center, through which select clinical researchers from the Foundation can use the center's top notch facilities as part of an extramural partnership structure.

"The very length of time it takes to find a treatment is not only not desirable but not tolerable," said Harry Johns, president and CEO of the Alzheimer's Association. "I'm interested in how can we do more together." Johns went on to discuss the lessons learned from a recent setback in the Alzheimer's community – the failure of Dimebon, the Russian antihistamine that initially showed promise as an alternative treatment for the disease but later failed to produce results in a phase three trial – and noted that it was only one of many compounds under development for Alzheimer's patients.

Dr. Greg Petsko, a professor of biochemistry and chemistry at Brandeis University, talked about the structural and heuristic roadblocks to getting basic research into clinics, and opportunities for overcoming them. "We have to start thinking about pathways and processes instead of phenotyping," he said. "We have to start training people in this new way. The only thing that is more expensive is when you don't do enough of it."

"Universities have become entangled in the idea of getting rid of conflict of interest," said James McCullough, CEO of Exosome Diagnostics, which focuses on the development and commercialization of blood-based cancer molecular diagnostics for patient stratification and disease monitoring. He said that partners are getting caught up in bureaucratic issues instead of focusing on working toward common goals.

Dr. Heather Preston, managing director of TPG Biotech, talked about how industry is becoming increasingly risk averse, and how part of the challenge in healthcare venture capital and biotech venture capital is not making the returns that investors have been promised. "Until industry realizes the human value of investing in early stage drug discovery, and trusts that companies like TPG will be good stewards of their money, this paradigm won't change," she noted.

The panelists debated whether "harnessing" was the right word to use in the title of the session. Instead of "reigning in" science, Lappin said, it is more important to let science be free and to ensure that the platform is in place so that new connections can be made.

Speakers:

•	Harry Johns, M.B.A. President and CEO Alzheimer's Association

•	Debra Lappin President, Council for American Medical Innovation

•	James McCullough CEO, Exosome Diagnostics, Inc.

•	Gregory Petsko, Ph.D. Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry Brandeis University

•	Heather Preston, M.D. Managing Director TPG Biotech

•	Samuel C. Silverstein, M.D. John C. Dalton Professor Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University