Non-profit Biotech

[joaks]

This is something I have been thinking about lately. One of those "if you could have your dream job" ideas. Anyone with business experience have any thoughts on such a creature?

I know regular biotechs will burn through a lot of cash very quickly. My current lab (at a university) had a collaboration with one. My contact there said to not worry about the cost of anything but just to tell him what I need (research supplies are very expensive in case you don't know) because he needed results quickly to present to the board or shareholders. This model obviously wouldn't work. I would have to take a cheapskate approach. The funding I had in mind were grants (same as I use now) and possibly some type of donation.

What would like to work on would be companion animal diseases; I would probably need to stay with cancer because that is what I am experienced in.

There are these types of labs at the vet school but the politics of the university make getting things done a nightmare at times.

Anyway, just a wild idea I wanted thoughts on. Feel free to burst my bubble!

 

[MolaKule]

If you can get grants and funding from benevolent individuals and corporations, then sell your story and go for a 501 type of institution.

Now, let's say you have found drug chemistries as a solution to certain cancers or certain cancer therapy's.

Will you freely publish those solutions and chemistries.

I would almost think that the benevolent individuals and corporations might place stipulations on that kind of thing.

I would have a legal contract or 501k NPI drawn up in order to avoid any future, potential misunderstandings. And in that statementment, list the goals, targets, type of research, what you will do with those research findings, etc.

Litigation could otherwise complicate your research endeavers.

 

[JimPghPA]

For profit Biotech can be a here today laid off tomorrow job, when it turns out that it is not making enough profit.

Would a non-profit Biotech be even worse? Kinda like a pre-known problem of a possible lay-off or complete close down, when the grant is complete, and you no longer have a grant to work for, unless a next one is approved.

 

[Phishin]

I've worked in several oncology labs. Two at Harvard Medicaid School for internships, and one at Indiana University Medical. I ended up at Eli Lilly in early phase drug discovery.

My questions are:

Are you thinking about possibility starting a non-profit biotech? If so, why vs. a for profit? What do you see being the advantages?

What are specifically referring to when say an animal companion disease?

 

[joaks]

Jim: you are correct that for-profit biotech is very high risk.

Phishin/Jim/molakule:
My thought process is this: The majority of medical research is geared towards healing human disease; I would like to treat animals. I'm thinking of cats and dogs at this point. Pet medical care is much more price elastic than human medical care. Most people have health insurance, most pets do not. Ignoring this, a family will not typically second-guess spending tens of thousands (or more) to treat a family member. Some people will pay a few thousands on a pet. Many will stop long before that. If the animal was $50-$200, why spend $1500 on treatment when you can get a new one? Because of this there will not be much room to generate revenue from pet medical products and I suspect it would be difficult to get investments (as are needed in a for-profit company) because of this.
THEREFORE, I would need to offer in exchange for funding low-cost products which result from the research.
I would need to research which specific diseases to work on. Feline leukemia would be a good first choice. Its a serious problem and my background is in leukemia.
This would be something I would need to start myself.

 

[Phishin]

I'm not trying to be harsh, but if humans still die from Leukemia despite 10's or 100's of millions dollars spent so far on research, what can you realistically hope to accomplish?

I honestly don't see this as being a viable business model. I'm a harcore animal lover, and make a decent living, and I can't imagine spending the money or the time putting a pet through chemotherapy.

From my history of pet ownership, usually when a pet begins to get cancer, or any other terminal disease, they are very advanced in age. So, even if an owner's pockets were very deep, would you want your dog/cat to suffer and possibly pull through a disease when the remaining part of their lives would likely be filled with arthritis, loss of bladder control, loss of eye-sight, etc. etc.

Dogs and cats are usually pretty healthy, until the end of their lives.

 

[joaks]

Phishin,
No offense taken! This idea is a stretch in the best of circumstances.

I will say that there are treatments that work but are unlikely to make it to the clinic. You can see an example from our lab, if you have access to it you can take a look at "FTY720, a new alternative for treating blast crisis chronic myelogenous leukemia and Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphocytic leukemia" published in JCI. We have two more papers using FTY720 or similar compounds in leukemias coming out. Will it reach the clinic? It's unlikely. The threshold for getting veterinary drugs out is considerably lower than for human drugs which could make some therapies more likely to see use. Conversely, the experimental drug programs associated with "compassionate use" which are common with human healthcare are very rare in the veterinary setting. So that is an additional hurdle to clear.

Actually, most people don't get cancer until they are old either, including leukemia, but I see your point completely. At least with the feline leukemia it is caused by an infectious disease so young animals could benefit.

Its too bad Percy Ross isn't around anymore.

 

[JimPghPA]

Originally Posted By: joaks
Jim: you are correct that for-profit biotech is very high risk.

Phishin/Jim/molakule:
My thought process is this: The majority of medical research is geared towards healing human disease; I would like to treat animals. I'm thinking of cats and dogs at this point. Pet medical care is much more price elastic than human medical care. Most people have health insurance, most pets do not. Ignoring this, a family will not typically second-guess spending tens of thousands (or more) to treat a family member. Some people will pay a few thousands on a pet. Many will stop long before that. If the animal was $50-$200, why spend $1500 on treatment when you can get a new one? Because of this there will not be much room to generate revenue from pet medical products and I suspect it would be difficult to get investments (as are needed in a for-profit company) because of this.
THEREFORE, I would need to offer in exchange for funding low-cost products which result from the research.
I would need to research which specific diseases to work on. Feline leukemia would be a good first choice. Its a serious problem and my background is in leukemia.
This would be something I would need to start myself.


There is a vaccine for cat leukemia, though it has to be given again after some time. And most cats that get leukemia are feral.

 

[PandaBear]

First of all, the reason for profit biotech is high risk is because of the development cost. So UNLESS YOU KNOW YOU CAN BURN THROUGH MONEY GIVEN TO YOU, non profit biotech is going to be way way worse.

A lot of the high risk research that private sector do not take on (i.e. due to certain diseases being "poor people" oriented or low probability) are government funded, so the researchers are less pressured to keep tweaking the same formula and apply for new patents, and more pressured to find out the mechanism or causes of the diseases.

So, you can focus on "animal cancers", but you may be looking at the wrong thing as finding funding for your dream would be the hard part vs testing out components that work on human but was not approved because they are too toxic.