How is it possible that the technologies that most people think are important for drug discovery have become hundreds, thousands, or billions of times cheaper, while the cost of R&D, per drug discovered, increased roughly 100 fold between 1950 and 2010?
if you google “Why I became a biologist” the answer “because I loved science and hated math” comes up an awful lot. There's a lot in biopharma which suggests we need more maths to revolutionize drugs. I think this software is a great starting point.
A primary issue with doing this kind of math in the industry is that it breaks the status quo.
Several things have slowed widespread adoption of doing the sort of predictive validity modeling. First, most drug candidates fail. If we had an accurately predictive model, it would likely predict failure. Current incentivization in the drug industry often focuses on “throwing x compounds over the wall to the next phase”. So instead of viewing these models as helpful to the overall company (which they are) they are often viewed as threats to a researcher’s own interests (which, in the short run, they are).
To give you an idea of how backwards biopharma is from software..... Every 9 years the cost of drug development doubles - Eroom's law.
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