A Tale of Two Companies

In a previous post, I wrote about Medicine in Need (MEND), a Cambridge, MA-based, not-for-profit, primarily because their mission, to apply “emerging and advanced delivery and manufacturing technologies to drug and vaccine candidates for diseases of poverty,” may yield inhaleable dry powder products, a promising route for low-cost, large-scale drug and vaccine delivery.  But MEND [...]

Ringing in the New Year (and in My Head)

The end of a calendar year is a favorite time for the media content providers to look back and churn out stories on movies of the year, events of the year, games of the year, famous people of the year, etc. of the year, and not to be left behind, here is my humble contribution [...]

Eyes on the Prize

One popular idea among the global health policy wonks is that offering big cash prizes will “incentivize” companies to develop products for global health diseases, and back in March, the Gates Foundation-funded think tank, the Center for Global Health R and D Policy Assessment (CGHRDPA), part of the Results for Development Institute consulting company (R4D), [...]

Slicing the Baloney

The shoving over Federal FY 2012 spending ratcheted up a notch this week with  publication of the President’s budget proposal and the many counter proposals being pushed by the several legislative factions and lobbies.  Of interest to the academic biomedical research lobby is the NIH budget which the administration’s plan will increase $1 billion to [...]

ReDuX

Last week I wrote about why vaccine development and new vaccines may be important in global health in the coming year, one of which is their cost-effectiveness (they prevent rather than treat).  What I did not note is that, as something that is put into people, assuring their safety and effectiveness is time- and labor-intensive [...]

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise

Recently, Rahim Rezaie and Peter Singer of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto (MRC) offered a diagnosis of the biotech industry in the developing world based on the considerable, and valuable, research the MRC has done over the past four years into global health-related commercialization (MRC).  In a commentary in Nature Biotechnology, “Global [...]

Singin’ Be-BOP

One of my interests (or distractions) is the idea of appropriate technology, that is, technology, usually in the form of a device or tool, that that is low cost and easy to use, yet is a powerful economic multiplier for an individual or group.  Here in the US, appropriate technology emerged in the heady 1960s [...]

Beached

August has the reputation for being a slow month but with many of us squeezing in a vacation or in back-to-school mode it is more a matter of relativity.   Here in Beantown, the rental vans and cars with out-of-state plates clog the streets near the colleges, but at least the SUVs ferrying kids three blocks [...]

The Emperor’s New Clothes

One of my favorite tales is the “Emperor’s New Clothes,” the most well-known version is that retold by the Danish folklorist, Hans Christian Anderson.  A vain emperor is convinced by scoundrels posing as tailors that they have created a beautiful set of clothes for him that can only been seen and appreciated by the sophisticated [...]

Commercialization: A Going Concern

To my simple way of thinking, commercialization is the final step of innovation:  all the steps needed to sell a new product or service and at an affordable price to a customer for whom it fulfills a need.  Ideally, the sales revenue allows recouping of the expenses the product’s  development, manufacture, distribution, and marketing plus [...]