ANNUAL

THE STATE OF INNOVATION
“I predict a 50% worldwide conversion from batch to continuous
manufacturing in the small molecule area within
the next 10 to 15 years, with $300 billion worth of products
made from continuous manufacturing methods each
year,” says Fernando Muzzio, director of C-SOPS.
Muzzio believes that continuous manufacturing’s
transition to biotech could be just around the corner.
“Continuous manufacturing is like an orchestra where
every instrument is playing from the same script, and to
make that transition over to biotech would be enormous.”
He explains that all of the benefits researchers are currently
achieving from the continuous manufacturing of small
molecules can also be applied to biomolecules by expanding
the template or paradigm.
The New Jersey Turnpike is lined with exits that lead
to flourishing centers of innovation like C-SOPS. Cruising
past the diners and smokestacks, we quickly discovered
that the Garden State’s hidden biotech hotspots are driving
the industry toward a brighter future—no stopping or
standing allowed.
P.K.: That’s right. The reason I mention
these, just a few of these examples,
is because they don’t require us to have
a whole new tranche of money. I am
still a big advocate for more money
for NIH, and my overall message to
BioNJ and to others would be for us
to have a “brain bond,” a savings bond
for disorders that are the most crippling,
disabling disorders to not only
people but to our country. To bend the
cost curve in the next few decades, we
need to start tomorrow, and the way
to do that is to pretend that we’re in a
war. Nothing is going to wreak a bigger
cost on our national security and
our economy than our people being
taken out by these brain illnesses. So
if we treated it like the crisis that it
is, we would do these savings bonds,
these patriot bonds. We’ve got to win
at all costs and that’s why I would say
we need new financing mechanisms
beyond the federal budget.
We would tap these new mechanisms,
like these social innovation
bonds, and we could repay these bonds
simply by reducing the costs associated
with treating these disorders. You
could reallocate the savings begotten
from reducing the costs and the disability
associated with these disorders
to pay for the underlying bond.
Still, we have a capitalist system.
The only way we’re going to get people
to invest in this space is to have intellectual
property, and you’ve got to be very
sensitive to how we protect that while
maximizing data sharing. We just have
to be very good at being a gatekeeper
for who gets to interrogate the science
and how they get to contribute to the
clinical research findings.
At One Mind, we invite the best
and brightest to look at our data as
we’re developing them, and then they
become part of the research because
they are able to give valuable feedback.
If they come up with some valuable
insight, well, then you can track
it and you can negotiate it with them
ahead of time to say that, “If you add
some value to this, we’re going to negotiate
your remuneration for that
value.” That’s a better way to go than
everybody husbanding their data and
not realizing the data’s potential, because
no one bothered to connect
this data with that data. That happens
because everybody is so afraid that
they’re going to give up their IP, but
the IP might lie in the fact that you’re
overlaying this data with that data.
That’s where the real value comes.
THE STATE OF INNOVATION: NJ 75