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The cancer megafund: a catalyst for disruptive innovation

Nature Biotechnology volume 31, pages 491–492 (2013)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

In their provocative paper in the October issue of Nature Biotechnology, Andrew Lo and colleagues1 propose a $30-billion cancer megafund that would tap credit markets using securitized R&D projects to raise unprecedented capital for cancer drug development. By financing many projects at once, such a megafund could reduce portfolio risk through diversification, making it attractive to pension funds, insurance companies and other large pools of investment capital. I would like to alert readers to a second benefit arising from the scale of the megafund that wasn't explored but could make the approach even more compelling to investors. This second benefit is the megafund's ability to slash the time, cost and risk of drug development by radically rethinking development processes, business models and organizational structures, and requiring the open sharing of data, knowledge and resources across portfolio projects. The resulting impact on productivity, risk and new therapeutic opportunities could potentially dwarf the returns from financial engineering.

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References

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  1. CommerceNet, Palo Alto, California, USA

    Jay M Tenenbaum

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  1. Jay M Tenenbaum
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Correspondence to Jay M Tenenbaum.

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Tenenbaum, J. The cancer megafund: a catalyst for disruptive innovation. Nat Biotechnol 31, 491–492 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2605

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