Development and Research

Drugs that work for everyone — with Mark Dybul

When the CEO of Walmart explained why his company was partnering with a U.S. global AIDS program, he didn't mention humanitarian concerns. He said Walmart couldn’t make its ten-year growth projections without a healthy, economically growing Africa—because a sick continent disrupted supply chains and eliminated future customers. I’m joined this week by Ambassador Mark Dybul [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_R._Dybul?ref=developmentandresearch.bio], one of the architects of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief?ref=developmentandresearch.bio], who argues that America has forgotten the core insight of the Marshall Plan: supporting other countries’ economic growth creates markets for American businesses, not competition for American workers. We talk about drug development, too—why many drugs don’t work in women and people of color, how buying HIV drugs for Africa led to improved treatments for Americans, whether the FDA was wrong to reject MDMA for PTSD [https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/09/mdma-lykos-maps-psychedelics/?ref=developmentandresearch.bio], and the changes that could cut drug development expenses by orders of magnitude while producing treatments that actually work for everyone, supporting American geopolitical dominance, and defusing geopolitical instabilities that will “make pandemics looks like child’s play”.

Fighting bacteria with viruses — with Jessica Sacher

Don't look now, but there are bacteriophages on your shoes. And if you scraped off a sample and sent them to a phage biology lab, one strain of them might turn out to be a natural, targeted predator for an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection that a surgery patient has been fighting for the past year. I'm joined this week by Jessica Sacher [https://phage.ca/], a Stanford phage biologist, cofounder of Phage Directory [https://phage.directory/], and founding research staff at Phage Australia [https://www.phageaustralia.org/]. Jessica has spent more than a decade studying natural viruses that kill bacteria, trying to bring century-old ‘phage’ therapy into modern medicine—with everything from basic-science research to personally hand-preparing treatments for individual patients. We talk about why this promising therapy got written off as "commie science," what fraction of PhD-thesis research samples just happen to cure an antibiotic-resistant infection, where they sell over-the-counter phage medication that's developed like a sourdough starter, and what it'll take to design clinical trials when every treatment is personalized to a particular patient. Full transcript at https://developmentandresearch.bio/episode/jessica-sacher/

Can public health make a profit? — with Charlie Petty

Most venture capitalists avoid infectious disease because the sickest patients live in countries that can't pay for expensive medicine—and because a one-time treatment can charge only a fraction of what a lifetime chronic drug can. Then again, one-time treatments for patients aged 18-30 in the developing world can be 10× to 100× cheaper to study than the Big Pharma playbook would have you believe. I'm joined this week by Charlie Petty [http://twitter.com/incredutility?ref=developmentandresearch.bio], a managing director at the Global Health Investment Corporation [https://ghicfunds.org/?ref=developmentandresearch.bio]—a venture fund that looks for profitable investments in companies developing treatments for the developing world. Their thesis is that you can make money solving problems for huge markets of people who have relatively little money, if you're creative about how markets work. We talk about what makes his job harder (and easier) than conventional biotech VC, which clinical trials cost an order of magnitude (or more!) less than you'd expect, selling to national and international drug stockpiles, and the looming rise of a “less unipolar” biotech world. Full transcript at https://developmentandresearch.bio/episode/charlie-petty/

Drugs Cheaper Than Beer — with Brian Finrow

I'm joined this week by Brian Finrow [https://x.com/Finrow], CEO of Lumen Bioscience [https://www.lumen.bio/], who thinks we would be better off if we grew more drugs in algae, and fewer in Chinese Hamster Ovary cells. We talk about why "monoclonal antibodies" are particularly safe and effective as drugs—but incredibly expensive to manufacture—and whether the fundamental problem of the biotech industry is that everyone just has too much money. Full transcript at https://developmentandresearch.bio/episode/brian-finrow/

How (not) to waste a billion dollars (on your clinical trial) — with Meri Beckwith

I'm joined this week by Meri Beckwith [https://x.com/meribeckwith], who founded Lindus Health [https://www.lindushealth.com/?ref=developmentandresearch-preview.ghost.io] after being a clinical trial patient—because he was astounded at how badly clinical drug trials were being run by the world's leading companies. We talk about why clinical trials companies are twenty years behind in adopting new technologies, how a flooded supply closet can cause a billion-dollar clinical trial to fail, and his speculation about the incentives that—so far—have stopped the world from getting better. Full transcript at https://developmentandresearch.bio/episode/meri-beckwith/