I am skeptical about a crowd founded Bio-tech company. If they are legit then it shouldn't be hard to get some NIH funding (you know, the crowd sourcing platform that I pay into already). Government funded research may not be a perfect system, but it works pretty well and is peer reviewed.
If they are legit then it shouldn't be hard to get some NIH funding (you know, the crowd sourcing platform that I pay into already
I'm a grant writer who works for nonprofit and public agencies, and I actually just finished working on an NIH proposal.
Getting NIH funding is very hard. First you have to find a program that fits the purpose. Then you have to get the application instructions. Application instructions look something like this: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-13-383.html , and those are just the instructions. [1] Assuming you can actually write a coherent narrative (this isn't easy either), or hire someone to write one, you have to gather the numerous supporting documents.
Assuming you have a complete and technically correct application, you then have to a) wait, b) compete with everyone else submitting applications, and c) hope the reviewers understand what you just submitted. It can easily take a year or more from the time you think, "Gee, I should submit an application" to signing a contract with a program officer.
It may be worth doing but alternative approaches make sense too.
[1] Application instructions are so hard to read that people on HN routinely don't recognize them as opportunities to get money. There are a bundle of related Federal programs call Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) that I used to submit to HN because potential YC applicants might be interested in SBIRs. Eventually I stopped because they rarely got any upvotes.
Hmm. I see an opportunity here for something that combines taxpayer pay-in with crowdfunding-style pay-out. Imagine if the NIH set some percentage of their budget aside for matching "donations" to crowdfunded science projects, at an extreme ratio, like 100:1 -- so $30k of demonstrated public interest would be matched with $3MM of NIH funding.
That seems, to me, to be within the spirit of representative democracy: for every 1 person who knows enough about X to put their money on the line, there's probably 100 people who would if they had X explained to them.
> so $30k of demonstrated public interest would be matched with $3MM of NIH funding.
This sets up a perverse incentive: the researchers who can best pander to a layperson crowd will have the highest chance, regardless of the technical merits of their proposal (which the general public almost certainly isn't qualified to judge).
Yeah, the first thing I thought of with this proposal was: this sounds like a great way to direct $$$ of NIH funding towards researching "why vaccination causes autism". For every $100k that Jenny McCarthy puts towards antivax research, the NIH would be compelled to match $10m...
### If this vaccine candidate is so promising, why can’t you get enough funds for it from government and foundation grants?
We’ve spoken to many parties and some seem interested, but do not believe this is the best route for us at this time. The landscape is highly political, and most bodies are focused on creating a neutralizing antibody vaccine. Anytime a product completely novel and innovative enters this space, it is extremely difficult to obtain early adopter. Given the extreme toll HIV/AIDs is taking on many communities around the world, we must move swiftly. We are confident these groups will come around down the road, but we do not want to wait.
It's actually surprisingly accurate. This part in particular " Anytime a product completely novel and innovative enters this space, it is extremely difficult to obtain early adopter. " Bringing a drug to market is a massive undertaking and most Biotech Investors look at novel treatments as way to high of a risk.
Genentech asked Kleiner Perkins for a $3.0 million dollar investment back in the 70s to see if it was even possible to accomplish genome splicing. The investment would have paid for building a new lab, new equipment, etc. KP decided to give them $500k and rent the UCLA lab instead. That was a groundbreaking investment (and the VC business had only been around for 15-20 years).
In the current landscape of investing, crowdfunding has become the vehicle for riskier investments that traditional VCs no longer make (because they don't fit 10% x $2 billion = happy LPs) and I'm sure KP knows firsthand about dealing with bio-pharma regulations.
Government grants go to all sorts of things that have a <10% chance of panning out big, though. That's the point of public funding for basic research (something some of its critics don't get).
>but do not believe this is the best route for us at this time.
It might not be the best route because while it will provide individual immunity, HIV transmission can and likely will still happen. The worst case seems to be everyone gets HIV but everyone is a controller.
Studies have also shown that people with higher viral loads are more likely to transmit HIV to others. Lower levels of virus are thus beneficial to the individual, because they predict longer AIDS-free survival, and to overall public health, because they may reduce the rate of transmission. Some HIV controllers are able to maintain levels of virus that are so low that they are termed “undetectable,” these individuals have been described in the literature as elite controllers or elite suppressors.
HIV is already non-fatal due to antiretroviral therapies. So, this vaccine won't necessarily result in an increase in the number of HIV+ people (who are alive). But even if it does, I still believe it's better than no vaccine at all. Curing HIV (as in, eliminating it completely) from a controller is no harder than curing it in a non-controller. Right now both are impossible, but that may change.
I don't understand the meaning of "Anytime a product completely novel and innovative enters this space, it is extremely difficult to obtain early adopter"
Are they saying they can't get access to patients for clinical trials? Sick people probably wouldn't like being called "early adopters".
