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Team:Wageningen UR/Stakeholders
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== Stakeholders / Test version == | == Stakeholders / Test version == | ||
Revision as of 13:33, 24 September 2012
Stakeholders / Test version
For our iGEM project we wanted to know how other people would think about the things we are making and how they think the impacts could be on people’s life when such a system is available. We talked with a lot of friends and family members about our project and most of them were really interested when they heard what such a system is capable of. Although they all knew that our project was not yet realized into practice, they could see the potential of it and they all thought it was amazing. Reactions we heard were:
"That would really be amazing!" and "........ (silent, looking stunning with a smile)."
It changes disease treatment significantly and a lot of negative aspects will disappear. And because our VLPs could be "smart" medicines, there is much more confidence in being completely cured. But of course, next to a public view we wanted a professional view as well and see how companies respond to our project and the iGEM competition. For this we asked a couple of questions to a senior project leader at MSD. MSD (Merck & Co) is a very large company and is a world leader in healthcare. They create medicines, vaccines, biological treatments, products and services to provide better healthcare for people and animals. The interviewed senior project leader already knew about the VLP concept and he said the following about our project related to patient treatment:
"This could indeed make big differences."
But he indicated as well that it is very hard to produce a system like this according to the high medical standards with respect to medicine quality. This could give very high production costs so we asked him if the development of our system is financial achievable. To this he responded:
"If it turns out that the combination of delivery and medicine has a superior ability to cure, everything is achievable in the modern world."
Next to opinions about our project we wanted to know how a company like MSD handles with open source competitions like iGEM. MSD does not see iGEM as negative competition because the interests are different. They see iGEM as a positive way for students to express themselves. This is what the senior project leader told us:
"We are always looking for highly educated and interested scientists and initiatives like iGEM make it possible for students to develop better and profile themselves."
If we would finally like to market our VLPs and with it a novel drug delivery system, it is important to know what is required and what drawbacks come with our project and iGEM in general. We interviewed a senior consultant in clinical trial operations to investigate what is possible. The main message was that there is a difference between small biotech companies and Big Pharmaceutical companies, especially concerning patenting and publishing results and ideas. The open source character of iGEM has some unexpected implications.
“When anything is published without patenting first, there is no money to be earned anymore. Therefore it could slow down the marketing and start of clinical trials for new products.”
So, as soon we make our ideas known to the public by joining iGEM we make it harder to market these great ideas unless we patent first. Besides the open source, we discussed also the benefits and problems of a universal carrier. It indeed might be a standardised tool to make it easier to produce vaccines and deliver medicines, but the regulators such as EMA and FDA will probably still ask for new clinical trials for each new applications.
“If you would like to market your carrier, you should aim at selling the idea to pharmaceutical companies who use it for their own drugs. This would make them responsible for the trials.”
Even though our tool has a large standardised component, it will probably not be standardised enough to bypass at least some of the clinical trials. The cost reduction is thus not in this part of the development of the drugs, but in the design phase.
Thus till this far a few public and professional opinions. This gives a much better view from outside the university about our iGEM project and the competition itself.
http://www.msd.nl
