Mail

A. Stephen Dahms
San Diego State University
Valencia, CA
sdahms100@yahoo.com

One tip I’d add is: follow up after the interview. Asking a reporter politely if you can provide more information or images is (1) helpful for reporters who are often writing several stories under 1- or 2-day deadlines and (2) can help improve the article’s accuracy. Working as a team with the reporter brings the most accurate information to print—a win for you, the reporter, and the public.

Ryan Ferrell
Chempetitive Group
San Diego, CA
ryanferrell@alumni.ucsd.edu

A point to consider is that, when facing a negative story, it is very important to respond in full and on the record as soon as possible. Failing to do so leaves the field to the other side (often anti-science cranks) during the crucial first few hours when a story is in the news and the tone is being set. At worst “no comment” can look like an admission of guilt.

Paul Browne
European Bioinformatics Institute
Cambridge, United Kingdom

I am no more convinced that massive data and crowd sourcing² will solve the problem [of new drug development] any more than high-throughput screening of compound libraries did over the last 2 decades.

In some sense, Big Pharma has already tried crowd sourcing by buying up small companies that have chanced on a promising compound for a disease. That doesn’t seem to have worked well either.

Perhaps better models will make a difference, but it may be that most of the fruit of this particular chemical tree has been picked. In which case, we may need a new paradigm.

Alex Tolley
Los Gatos, CA
alexandertolley@gmail.com

There is a missing link—no methodology is available to systematically describe the molecule that you would want to use to modulate a given target. Even worse, the only two methodologies in widespread use today—rational drug design and high-throughput screening—have such inherent limitations that it is amazing they ever work. Therefore, the vicious cycle: even if a target is validated, the likelihood of finding a modulator is so difficult, and few would be foolish enough to spend the time and money to find a modulator for an unvalidated target. Thus most of the new biological findings remain on the shelf.

I find it astonishing that in this well-recognized situation, no one is interested in seriously considering new methodologies that might solve this roadblock, which will only get more serious as time goes by. It is actually the only missing link hampering the discovery of new drugs.

Martin Gerstel
Compugen Ltd.
Tel Aviv, Israel
mgerstel@netvision.net.il

The more intellectual property (IP) is free, the more efficient the system will be, and I agree that the basic science needs to be done, but without funding, it won’t happen.

If you have money, and want to give it away and have the maximum potential impact, this is what you do: decide on an issue that you care passionately about, whether it is AIDS, malaria, climate change, etc. Find patented solutions, buy the patent, and make it public domain. Then you let all the people who could benefit from it know about it. Releasing critical IP would unleash a “firestorm” of progress within that particular field. It would be beneficial if the government effectively seized and released IP, but it would discourage investment.

Steven Pace
The Colours of Life
Melbourne, Australia
steven@coloursoflife.com.au

For the last 50 years, randomized controlled trials have been the unquestioned “gold standard.” But now? They take too long, cost too much, are fraught with unsolvable ethical problems that patients and many physicians dislike, and forbid asking the patient specific molecular questions. If we can’t reach agreement that clinical methodologies must adapt (at this point meaning dramatic, disruptive change) to new knowledge of the biologic basis of disease, then our ability to accelerate advances in medicine will remain stagnant. A key point in this article is that the new system should be patient-centric. It has to be a system that makes sense to them personally. If real patients are left out of the process of change, we will likely end up in the wrong place—again.

Steven Walker
Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Development Drugs
Saint Petersburg, FL
swalker581@aol.com

The article³ [on the discovery of penicillin] skims over the fact that Fleming did not go on to do anything with his finding. In fact, it was left to Howard Florey and Ernst Chain (non-British) many years later to realize what it meant and to develop the chance finding into a true discovery. This was not supported by the British Government, and funding was so poor that the project nearly folded several times, were it not for Florey’s unyielding tenacity, and finally a $200 donation from an American philanthropic group that permitted development to proceed to the point where it could prosper. The war effort finally brought funds that moved this on further, and the rest is history.

Brendon Coventry
The University of Adelaide
Adelaide, South Australia
bcoventry@medicine.adelaide.edu.au

This article overly simplifies the origins of the discovery of penicillin. Some think that the first systematic discoverer of penicillin was a Frenchman, Eric Duchesne. He submitted a thesis in 1896 about the effects of a green mold on bacterial growth. J.W. Henderson has written an article in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings (72:683-87, 1997) on the history of the discovery of penicillin that puts Fleming’s role into perspective. However, it’s possible that the real discoverers of the effect of penicillin mold on bacterial growth are much more ancient than even Duchesne. Many non-Western societies have long been aware of the value of plants and microorganisms for use as medicines.

Stephen Barnes
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, AL
sbarnes@uab.edu

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