The first international workshop on the role and impact of mathematics in medicine: a collective account

The First International Workshop on The Role and Impact of Mathematics in Medicine (RIMM) convened in Paris in June 2010. A broad range of researchers discussed the difficulties, challenges and opportunities faced by those wishing to see mathematical methods contribute to improved medical outcomes. Finding mechanisms for inter- disciplinary meetings, developing a common language, staying focused on the medical problem at hand, deriving realistic mathematical solutions, obtainin

A Scientific Roadmap for Antibiotic Discovery: A Sustained and Robust Pipeline of New Antibacterial Drugs and Therapies is Critical to Preserve Public Health

In recent decades, the discovery and development of new antibiotics have slowed dramatically as scientific barriers to drug discovery, regulatory challenges, and diminishing returns on investment have led major drug companies to scale back or abandon their antibiotic research. Consequently, antibiotic discovery—which peaked in the 1950s—has dropped precipitously. Of greater concern is the fact that nearly all antibiotics brought to market over the past 30 years have been variations on existing drugs. Every currently available antibiotic is a derivative of a class discovered between the early 1900s and 1984.At the same time, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has accelerated, giving rise to life-threatening infections that will not respond to available antibiotic treatment. Inevitably, the more that antibiotics are used, the more that bacteria develop resistance—rendering the drugs less effective and leading public health authorities worldwide to flag antibiotic resistance as an urgent and growing public health threat

Valuing Strategic Alliances in the Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology Industry

In an era of rapid and changing technological advances, a firm's survival and growth depends on its' ability to introduce products to the market. Since a firm's growth and survival depends on its' ability to develop products and services over time (Penrose, 1959), the question posed by this study is what determines a firm's ability to introduce products to market? In this study, a firm's ability to introduce product to markets are influenced by its' "absorptive capacity" to identify and internalize the resource benefits of its' alliance partners. Such an integrated view is absent in firm level and strategic alliance studies of product development. A conceptual model of firm product introductions is developed and empirically tested. Results generally support the hypotheses of this study.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Prospect patents, data markets, and the commons in data-driven medicine : openness and the political economy of intellectual property rights

Scholars who point to political influences and the regulatory function of patent courts in the USA have long questioned the courts’ subjective interpretation of what ‘things’ can be claimed as inventions. The present article sheds light on a different but related facet: the role of the courts in regulating knowledge production. I argue that the recent cases decided by the US Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, which made diagnostics and software very difficult to patent and which attracted criticism for a wealth of different reasons, are fine case studies of the current debate over the proper role of the state in regulating the marketplace and knowledge production in the emerging information economy. The article explains that these patents are prospect patents that may be used by a monopolist to collect data that everybody else needs in order to compete effectively. As such, they raise familiar concerns about failure of coordination emerging as a result of a monopolist controlling a resource such as datasets that others need and cannot replicate. In effect, the courts regulated the market, primarily focusing on ensuring the free flow of data in the emerging marketplace very much in the spirit of the ‘free the data’ language in various policy initiatives, yet at the same time with an eye to boost downstream innovation. In doing so, these decisions essentially endorse practices of personal information processing which constitute a new type of public domain: a source of raw materials which are there for the taking and which have become most important inputs to commercial activity. From this vantage point of view, the legal interpretation of the private and the shared legitimizes a model of data extraction from individuals, the raw material of information capitalism, that will fuel the next generation of data-intensive therapeutics in the field of data-driven medicine

Therapeutic Delivery Technology and its Economic Impact

Therapeutic delivery technology is a current area of high interest in both university and industrial settings. These technologies are being developed in order to deliver therapeutic agents, such as genes, proteins, and drugs, to patients more efficiently. Nanoscale delivery vehicles have proven to be useful for these applications; these vehicles may either be naturally produced or chemically synthesized. The physical properties of these nanomaterials must be characterized correctly using instrumentation that evaluates their size, morphology, and potential for agglomeration. These technologies represent a high-growth economic area that fosters entrepreneurship and innovation. Because of this innovative spirit, research and economic interest will continue to be focused on therapeutic delivery technologies

Print Journal Analysis and Journal Removal Projects

The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center\u27s main objectives were: To analyze the print journal holdings to determine which titles should be retained, donated, or discarded. To develop a plan for retaining, removing, and consolidating selected material on both the 3rd floor of the library and in offsite storage in HSSB

National Scientific Facilities and Their Science Impact on Non-Biomedical Research

H-index, proposed by Hirsch is a good indicator of the impact of a scientist's research. When evaluating departments, institutions or labs, the importance of h-index can be further enhanced when properly calibrated for size. Particularly acute is the issue of federally funded facilities whose number of actively publishing scientists frequently dwarfs that of academic departments. Recently Molinari and Molinari developed a methodology that shows the h-index has a universal growth rate for large numbers of papers, allowing for meaningful comparisons between institutions. An additional challenge when comparing large institutions is that fields have distinct internal cultures, with different typical rates of publication and citation; biology is more highly cited than physics, which is more highly cited than engineering. For this reason, this study has focused on the physical sciences, engineering, and technology, and has excluded bio-medical research. Comparisons between individual disciplines are reported here to provide contextual framework. Generally, it was found that the universal growth rate of Molinari and Molinari holds well across all the categories considered, testifying to the robustness of both their growth law and our results. The overall goal here is to set the highest standard of comparison for federal investment in science; comparisons are made with the nations preeminent private and public institutions. We find that many among the national facilities compare favorably in research impact with the nations leading universities.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Metaphors in Nanomedicine: The Case of Targeted Drug Delivery

International audienceThe promises of nanotechnology have been framed by a variety of metaphors, that not only channel the attention of the public, orient the questions asked by researchers, and convey epistemic choices closely linked to ethical preferences. In particular, the image of the 'therapeutic missile' commonly used to present targeted drug delivery devices emphasizes precision, control, surveillance and efficiency. Such values are highly praised in the current context of crisis of pharmaceutical innovation where military metaphors foster a general mobilization of resources from multiple fields of cutting-edge research. The missile metaphor, reminiscent of Paul Ehrlich's 'magic bullet', has framed the problem in simple terms: how to deliver the right dose in the right place at the right moment? Chemists, physicists and engineers who design multi-functional devices operating in vitro can think in such terms, as long as the devices are not actually operating through the messy environment of the body. A close look at what has been done and what remains to be done suggests that the metaphor of the "therapeutic missile" is neither sufficient, nor even necessary. Recent developments in nanomedicine suggest that therapeutic efficacy cannot be obtained without negotiating with the biological milieu and taking advantage of what it affords. An 'oïkological' approach seems more appropriate, more heuristic and more promising than the popular missile. It is based on the view of organism as an oikos that has to be carefully managed. The dispositions of nanocapsules have to be coupled with the affordances of the environment. As it requires dealing with nanoparticles as relational entities (defined by their potential for interactions) rather than as stable substances (defined by intrinsic properties) this metaphor eventually might well change research priorities in nanotechnology in general