Things I noticed - Part Deux
August 12, 2006
Looks like a few people actually like the first installment of Things I noticed, so here comes the follow up.
UC libraries on Google
Earlier this week, the University of Calfornia libraries were welcomed into the Google family. This adds a powerful resource to the Google library project. The potential impact of such an endeavor is obvious and far reaching. A little too late for my graduate thesis, but I look forward to taking advantage of the work soon, as I am sure many students will too. I wonder what the publishing industry has to say about all this.
As drug costs rise, is collaboration the key?
Peter Corr, SVP of R&D at Pfizer, gave the opening keynote at this years DDT conference. The theme of his talk was the need to foster partnerships between various agencies to realize the promise of biomedical innovation. He brought special attention to a few points that the industry should focus on
- Prevention and ealy intervention. Now if only the industry would actually make this a key strategic innovative. Preventive medicine still seems rather far away
- Diagnostics. This is something that will drive the future of medicine. Some of the best research and development in the field is being done in developing genomics and imaging based diagnostics that can pinpoint causal features of disease. Molecular diagnostics will drive preventive and predictive medicine, and hopefully even personalized treatments, so its good to see it on the radar of big pharma.
- Improved compliance - a huge problem for the pharma industry
At the same conference, Steven Paul, EVP of Science and Technology at Eli Lilly estimated that the cost of producing a successful drug could approach $2 billion by 2010. While there are some who will dispute this analysis, he is very correct in saying that current business models are fast becoming untenable at this rate of increase. The industry is facing a crisis. Costs are spiraling and the benefits of increased spend with R&D are definitely not very visible. Drug attrition in trials continues to be a problem. The industry is struggling with some of these challenges and needs new techniques and, I believe, fundamentally new approaches to drug development. Collaborations between cutting edge academic research, non-profit organizations, the industry and regulatory agences will be the driving force that will help overcome some of the apparent hurdles facing the field.
FDA forms internal nanotechnology task force
The acting-FDA commish just announced the formation of a task force that will determine regulatory approaches for relevant nanotechnology-based materials and products. The task force plans to hold meetings, assess scientific knowledge and work with agencies like the EPA to gather relevant information and drive policy. One aspect of the task forces activities that I hope stays on top of the list is communicating the value of nanotechnology to the general public and appropriate management of the safety of nanomaterials. There is much fear and false information out there on the dangers of nanotechnology and it is up to agencies like the FDA to perform the comprehensive leg work required to allay fears among the public and politicians.
Nascent Science Foo Camp
I am suitably green around the gills about the announcement of the first Scince Foo Camp, a meeting being organized by O’Reilly and Nature. The meeting is being held at the Googleplex. Pedro is going, so I am looking forward to feedback and writeups on the goings on. Perhaps we should have a science barcamp one of these days.
… and talking about get togethers
The medical blog network is organizing the healthcare blogging summit 2006. I am not familiar with this organization, but it seems to be focussed on healthcare providers and marketers and how New Media can be leveraged by these groups. Speakers include Steve Rubel and a number of marketers and consultants. Conspicuously absent - the pharmaceutical industry.
Say it ain’t so
Tag spam hits Connotea. Is nothing sacred anymore? Hari still owes me the identity of the offending party.
Kurzweil in the pipeline
I respect Ray Kurzweil as a thinker and for inventing one of the best sample-based synthesizers. At the same time, I am equally critical of his misplaced obsession with transhumanism which is described in books like The Singularity is Near. I am also a regular reader of Derek Lowe’s wonderful blog. So it was with a great deal of interest that I read his post on Ray Kurzweil’s future. Derek very succinctly pulls out some very obvious criticisms. Kurzweil combines accurate information, a very optimistic outlook and assertions that never make sense to me. Fundamentally, I belive futurists like Kurzweil underestimate the complexity of biology. We are not even close to understanding how all those genes and proteins interactions and control our biology. To think that we will be able to get a level of understanding that will drive events like the Singularity in the near future is absurd.
Technology is a great enabler, and yes, one day we will be able to conquer many diseases, but not by 2019 and I also think that the obsession with living forever is very misplaced, when so many in the world go hungry every day.
Quackenbush on data standards
Data standards or the lack thereof has been the subject of blog posts before. I couldn’t help noticing a paper by Brooksbank and Quackenbush entitled: Data standards: a call to action. The time is now. If we wait too much longer, we will lose the battle to the incredible amounts of data that we are capable of collecting. If we really want to make sound decisions and glean good information from all that data, data integration and analysis are a must and to be successful at that good, open, standards are equally important.
Genetic diagnostics
I found this article on the development of a new genetic test to predict patient outcomes from chemotherapy for patients with early stage lung cancer. The study, performed at the Duke Institute of Genome Sciences is part of a trend of developing genetic diagnostic kits for the prediction of therapy outcomes. Other tests include those developed by Agendia and Genomic Health. The next few years will be critical as these tests go through rigorous clinical trials.
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Posted by Deepak Singh | Filed Under Admin, Biotech, Business, Industry, Informatics, Innovation, Pharma, Science, Weekly Roundup
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Comments
3 Responses to “Things I noticed - Part Deux”
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I think you’re missing the point in regards to your two mentioned criticisms quoted below re: Kurzweil. He’s talking about how by the 2019 - 2029 timeframe, both computing power and brain scanning techniques will have advanced far enough to allow us to begin to have smarter than human artificial intelligence. Once you have that, then literally those intelligences will be able to make scientific breakthroughs at a quicker (and continually accelerating) pace compared to human thinking speed/abilities, and most remaining traditional human problems should begin to fall rapidly.
If you want to correctly attack his arguments, you must understand how informatics and eventually full flown AI are at the core of them, and you must explain why such things will not happen when we have computing power orders of magnitude above human brainpower, large economic and scientific wins pushing us to use those computers in such ways, etc.
“I belive futurists like Kurzweil underestimate the complexity of biology. We are not even close to understanding how all those genes and proteins interactions and control our biology. To think that we will be able to get a level of understanding that will drive events like the Singularity in the near future is absurd.
Technology is a great enabler, and yes, one day we will be able to conquer many diseases, but not by 2019 and I also think that the obsession with living forever is very misplaced, when so many in the world go hungry every day.”
I admit that while I understand the informatics side very well, I don’t know everything about the capabilities and developments in AI. That said, I have read enough about what Ray has said in the past and completely disagree. Your statement about “smarter than human AI” is an example of people underestimating the complexity and nature of human biology. I don’t think that the kind of understanding required is going to happen in the timeframe that many futurists think it will. I have still seen no evidence of the kinds of breakthroughs required. The day will come when we will be able to regenerate tissue, monitor and treat disease in very early stages, but those are still incremental steps in the development of technology.
The other point, one I dont make emphatically enough, is that I would rather see some of the smartest people in the world focus on eradicating malaria, TB, AIDS, that trying to make those in the western world live longer, but that’s a philosophical discussion, not a scientific one.
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