Notes on Catalyzing Health, August 2024: Are We Limiting Medical Innovation by Underfunding Tools For Scientific Discovery?

Tool building is a quintessential human endeavor that has augmented our capacity for survival and growth for millennia. Scientific tools, designed to broaden our understanding of the natural world, have had an outsized impact on our ability to extend and improve human lifespan. Perhaps most famously, the invention of the compound microscope circa 1600 catalyzed a transformation in the way that we understand and protect against infectious diseases. A long line of research tools followed (e.g., spectrometers, electron microscope, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), flow cytometry, DNA sequencing, CRISPR-Cas9 and so on), first advancing our biological knowledge and then paving a path for novel medical interventions.

If tool development catalyzes scientific discovery and discovery catalyzes medical innovation—how do we catalyze tool development? The path to market for tool companies is universally categorized as “harder” than for other components of the biotech ecosystem.  Many reasons are floated for why this is—slower rates of growth, difficult distribution channels, limited labor pool, competition for capital with other investment categories that have greater upside potential, etc.

At the Commons, we are interested in better understanding how well current market strategies support tool development and whether there are common points of failure that might be addressable.

On the positive side, we have noted several recent examples of creative support strategies for tool building by others in the field. This includes the expansion by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative of their biohub network—which embeds tool engineering directly into scientific programming to advance an emerging research area. It also includes the advancement by Convergent Research and others  of tool-focused Focused Research Organizations (FROs) which provide fixed term funding into newly formed organizations focused in a singular manner on development of a scientifically important tool. These are viable alternatives for tool developers who are facing a market failure.

We are curious to understand and partner to explore further how scientists, entrepreneurs, funders, and corporations think about and address challenges in tool development.  Please get in touch and tell us your perspective!



First Five (Tools Edition)
First Five is a curated list of articles, studies, and publications that have caught our eye on the topics of public goods and emerging applied technologies.

‍1/ The original pocketknife
Humans are distinguished from other animals not by our use of tools but by our innovations in their production. In particular, tool miniaturization enabled tools to be easily carried for “on demand” use across habitats, including to be thrown  as arrows or spears during hunting.

2/ This is your brain on tools
Scientists monitor brain function in people learning to make primitive stone tools to determine which regions may have promoted the technological evolution of our ancestors.

‍3/ Tooling to identify the known knowns
First time entrepreneurs face a steep learning curve as they navigate the paths to realize their vision. While support services are available, these are less plentiful and harder to find for entrepreneurs building in the non-profit sector. This summer, Panorama Global has launched a resource called SPARK that guides this group towards available funders and support services.

‍4/ Financial tools to address market failures in life science
Conscience, a new non-profit funded by the Canadian government, is seeking to catalyze drug discovery in underserved disease areas overlooked by the pharmaceutical industry.  Their most recent program, starting next month, will release funding for preclinical target validation and tractability studies with the hopes of creating the necessary evidence to attract development partners.

‍5/ Integrating data science tools into pharma
The newly formed DISRUPT-DS industry roundtable on data science provides a forum for pharma to share experiences, benchmark activity, compare tooling needs,and articulate collective priorities to data science entrepreneurs and vendors.



Citations‍

1. Galison P. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics.

2. Kahn TS. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

3. Lewin R. Ethiopian Stone Tools are World’s Oldest. Science 1981 211(4484): 806-7.

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