Opportunities for Dutch Biorefineries

Deze Roadmap Bioraffinage beschrijft een aantal mogelijke routes naar de ontwikkeling en implementatie van een bioraffinage-gerelateerde Bio-based Economy in Nederland. De Roadmap combineert korte- en middellange termijn mogelijkheden (commerciële implementatie, demonstratie plants, pilot plants en gerelateerd toegepast onderzoek) met strategisch onderzoek voor de langere termijn. Tevens zijn vier z.g. Moonshots uitgewerkt, als voorziene bioraffinagestrategieën met een grote potentie voor de Nederlandse economi

Jefferson Digital Commons quarterly report: July-September 2018

This quarterly report includes: New Collection Alert Articles Code Red: Battling the Plague of Gun Violence Dissertations From the Archives Grand Rounds and Lectures House Staff Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Posters Journals and Newsletters Nexus Maximus Posters Third Annual Sepsis Symposium What People are Sayin

A toolkit of policies to promote innovation

Economic theory suggests that market economies are likely to under-provide innovation due to the public good nature of knowledge. Empirical evidence from the US and other advanced economies supports this idea. We summarize the pros and cons of different policy instruments for promoting innovation and provide a basic “toolkit” describing which policies are most effective, based on our reading of the evidence. In the short-run, R&D tax credits or direct public funding seem the most productive, but in the longer-run increasing the supply of human capital (e.g. relaxing immigration rules or expanding university STEM admissions) are likely more effective

Moonshots for aging

As the global population ages, there is increased interest in living longer and improving one's quality of life in later years. However, studying aging - the decline in body function - is expensive and time-consuming. And despite research success to make model organisms live longer, there still aren't really any feasible solutions for delaying aging in humans. With space travel, scientists couldn't know what it would take to get to the moon. They had to extrapolate from theory and shorter-range tests. Perhaps with aging, we need a similar moonshot philosophy. And though "shot" might imply medicine, perhaps we need to think beyond biological interventions. Like the moon, we seem a long way away from provable therapies to increase human healthspan (the healthy period of one's life) or lifespan (how long one lives). This review therefore focuses on radical proposals. We hope it might stimulate discussion on what we might consider doing significantly differently than ongoing aging research

Science and Technology: A Catalyst for Improving Human Health in Developing Countries

Science and technology have the potential to make major contributions to the development of medical devices that can help address the highest burdens of diseases in developing countries. This paper examined how science and technology could assist in speeding the development and dissemination of information on new health products that could address the largest health threats in developing countries. The paper investigated the traits needed by such production to have the desired impact. It also reviewed the extent to which some medical devices and processes possess those traits and discuss the potential of science and technology to develop healthproducts,reveal the constrains on product development and the mechanism in overcoming the new health products. Towards understanding the potential of science and technology to develop more new health products to addressing high-burden diseases, it was therefore recommended that there is need to consider the characteristics of diagnostics, drugs, vaccines and medical devices that could most effectively and efficiently address the critical continent health problems. Science and technology should focus on bio-technologies that could help improve health products that are affordable and appropriate to the circumstances of developing countries, using instrument to addressing the most pressing health needs and be appropriate to the health conditions that cause the largest burden of diseases in developing countries of the world

Why so few Nobel Prizes for cancer researchers?:An analysis of Nobel Prize nominations for German physicians with a focus on Ernst von Leyden and Karl Heinrich Bauer

Purpose!#!To date, 11 scientists have received the Nobel Prize for discoveries directly related to cancer research. This article provides an overview of cancer researchers nominated for the Nobel Prize from 1901 to 1960 with a focus on Ernst von Leyden (1832-1910), the founder of this journal, and Karl Heinrich Bauer (1890-1978).!##!Methods!#!We collected nominations and evaluations in the archive of the Nobel committee of physiology or medicine in Sweden to identify research trends and to analyse oncology in a Nobel Prize context.!##!Results!#!We found a total of 54 nominations citing work on cancer as motivation for 11 candidates based in Germany from 1901 to 1953. In the 1930s, the US became the leading nation of cancer research in a Nobel context with nominees like Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) and George N. Papanicolaou (1883-1962).!##!Discussion!#!The will of Alfred Nobel stipulates that Nobel laureates should have 'conferred the greatest benefit to mankind'. Why were then so few cancer researchers recognized with the Nobel medal from 1901 to 1960? Our analysis of the Nobel dossiers points at multiple reasons: (1) Many of the proposed cancer researchers were surgeons, and surgery has a weak track record in a Nobel context; (2) several scholars were put forward for clinical work and not for basic research (historically, the Nobel committee has favoured basic researchers); (3) the scientists were usually not nominated for a single discovery, but rather for a wide range of different achievements

Barriers to clinical adoption of next generation sequencing: Perspectives of a policy Delphi panel

AbstractThis research aims to inform policymakers by engaging expert stakeholders to identify, prioritize, and deliberate the most important and tractable policy barriers to the clinical adoption of next generation sequencing (NGS). A 4-round Delphi policy study was done with a multi-stakeholder panel of 48 experts. The first 2 rounds of online questionnaires (reported here) assessed the importance and tractability of 28 potential barriers to clinical adoption of NGS across 3 major policy domains: intellectual property, coverage and reimbursement, and FDA regulation. We found that: 1) proprietary variant databases are seen as a key challenge, and a potentially intractable one; 2) payer policies were seen as a frequent barrier, especially a perceived inconsistency in standards for coverage; 3) relative to other challenges considered, FDA regulation was not strongly perceived as a barrier to clinical use of NGS. Overall the results indicate a perceived need for policies to promote data-sharing, and a desire for consistent payer coverage policies that maintain reasonably high standards of evidence for clinical utility, limit testing to that needed for clinical care decisions, and yet also flexibly allow for clinician discretion to use genomic testing in uncertain circumstances of high medical need

There is no market for new antibiotics: This allows an open approach to research and development

There is an increasingly urgent need for new antibiotics, yet there is a significant and persistent economic problem when it comes to developing such medicines. The problem stems from the perceived need for a 'market' to drive commercial antibiotic development. In this article, we explore abandoning the market as a prerequisite for successful antibiotic research and development. Once one stops trying to fix a market model that has stopped functioning, one is free to carry out research and development (R&D) in ways that are more openly collaborative, a mechanism that has been demonstrably effective for the R&D underpinning the response to the COVID pandemic. New 'open source' research models have great potential for the development of medicines for areas of public health where the traditional profit-driven model struggles to deliver. New financial initiatives, including major push/pull incentives, aimed at fixing the broken antibiotics market provide one possible means for funding an openly collaborative approach to drug development. We argue that now is therefore the time to evaluate, at scale, whether such methods can deliver new medicines through to patients, in a timely manner

Disrupting Innovation

This analysis creates a coherent conceptual framework for inclusive development, one of the first of its kind. In doing so, it reimagines innovation with community impact embedded at the forefront of thought. The aim is in direct lineage of Norman Krumholz’s equity planning that captured the profession’s imagination. Except, here, it would be more aptly described as “equity economic development.” The analysis uses novel statistical techniques, particularly natural language processing and social network analysis, to more precisely answer questions that Cleveland has been trying to answer for some time. Like what are the region’s R&D assets that differentiate it from other cities? Who are the key researchers doing that work? How could these innovation-inducing assets be fostered by precision migration and convention strategies via the likes of Global Cleveland and Destination Cleveland? Most crucially: Do any of these regional assets align with neighborhood needs, in effect creating a feedback loop between economic and community development as opposed to the parallel, diverging, paths these sectors are currently on? The short answer is “yes.” A longer answer can be found in the pages that follow. It’s enough now to say population health lies at the nexus of the opportunities and challenges that Cleveland faces in this brave new world going forward. The economy is inseparable from health. Without health, prosperity isn’t possible. It’s an appropriate time to “disrupt,” or fundamentally reimagine, innovation, the healthcare industry, and health outcomes in Cleveland. The endgame, here, is not yet another economic development policy with well-being as a hoped-for byproduct. The endgame is better health in Cleveland. In fact, better population health is an economic development policy, if not the only economic development policy that’s needed in this time and place