
Would you like to influence decisions in medical research? - sagitweiss
Would you like to influence medical research. Decisions on medical research directions, strategy, are taken behind closed doors. Would you like to have a say? And why, why yes, why not? No matter if you have a health condition or if you are healthy. Thanks!
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sagitweiss
Hi, That's a great scenario indeed you are describing. I wasn't aware. I was
actually focusing at first on the pre-commercial efforts as you call them, or
pure medical research as I call it. Some research will reach its impact
without going through commercialization, such as educative tools, prevention
programs etc... So does generic drug repurposing. You can patent in some cases
but this will prolong time to market by a few years and increase cost. If the
price tag is low enough for philanthropic money it might be better to keep it
this way. Do you think people in general are interested in getting involved in
medical research? There doesn't seem to be much interest, unless I didn't
formulate my question right

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reasonattlm
Find research you like, find a syndicate of investors, and do the legwork to
bring those two things together. This is going on today in the matter of
rejuvenation research - people talking about and funding the early stage
startups they like that happen to be following the SENS model for cell and
tissue damage repair. You don't even have to be wealthy to do this, just
someone who can talk to be people and knows something about the science.
Scores of people in the network built around the SENS Research Foundation are
doing their part to make relationships and get the right people talking to one
another in order to launch startups working on the desired types of therapy.

That is how it is done.

From the point of view of people with funds to spend, there is more that can
be done to influence research than just sitting around waiting for startups to
present themselves.

Investing is something that investors do moderately well - there is a method
and a discipline and a body of tradition and knowledge. But it isn't the only
thing that investors can do to speed the development of longevity science.
What the investment community should do, attempts to some degree, but remains
very poor at accomplishing, is the process of nudging along pre-commercial
scientific efforts, of strategically funding specific research projects in
order to produce a new crop of longevity science companies. This seeding of
the field can be highly effective, as the SENS Research Foundation has
demonstrated over the past decade or so, yet for the most part even personally
interested investors leave philanthropy in their field to other people. Thus
funding for truly radical, high-risk, high-reward new research is next to non-
existent. The other side of the coin, targeted funding for medical research
projects with excellent prospects, or that are only a few years and a million
dollars away from the leap to a candidate therapy and a startup, nudging them
into the target zone, is also very thin on the ground.

This is a point that Peter Thiel has been making for a few years under the
heading of "radical philanthropy." The investor community does conduct
philanthropy, but in an ad-hoc fashion, without much organization, rigor, or
discipline. There is no body of tradition and knowledge in the same way as
exists in the business of for-profit investment. Thus great many philathropic
ventures conducted by investors are ultimately largely a waste, failing to
achieve the practical ends that are possible in principle because they fail to
meaningfully advance research towards the clinic. Money is poorly used, and
there is little in the way of deliberate, carefully efforts to nudge promising
research across the line. This is strange given that it is a very good way to
be positioned as the primary investor in ventures in a field that an
individual might want to see move faster.

All of this is to note that the launch of a company happens a long way after
the start of the development process, and investors should become involved
well before that point if they want to better achieve their goals. Many of the
donors to SENS rejuvenation research projects initiatives are investors
themselves, and some are presently coming together as a loose community of
peers to invest in the startups that are now beginning to emerge from research
efforts. Yet this is still at the present time, even hard-won as it is, only
one increment better than a collection of happenstance events and connections,
tumbling in more or less the right direction and working out because everyone
involved has much the same goal in mind - which is to say therapies to treat
aging, and sooner rather than later. Building on what has been learned so far,
better and more organized ways to meld philanthropy and investment might be
assembled. A community with deep pockets that can build the intricate
networking tools and the energetic, highly networked approach to for-profit
investment that presently exists should be able to make the leap over the
barrier to organize and assist the non-profit research pipeline as well.

