Medical diagnostics can be the tools for change

After running biopharmaceutical companies for many years, what’s it like for you to run a nonprofit?

Well, it’s new and exciting, but in many ways I’m continuing a mission that I started when I was running a vaccines company. And that’s to make sure the fruits of all our clever technology and all our labors actually make it to everyone that needs it. This is a different business model, but my mission is the same.

How important are diagnostics to solving public health problems in the developing world?

I think they’re absolutely critical. I mean, there’s a RAND report saying that we could save millions of lives if we had the right diagnostics. You can’t treat something if you don’t know what it is. And we certainly have problems of undertreatment in the developing world. But we also have problems of the wrong treatment. So diagnostics are critical.

Is there a severe shortage of diagnostics in the field right now?

There are lots in the developed world. You know, if we go in and have blood drawn, we’ll have a myriad of tests. But most of those tests can’t be performed at all in the developing world because centralized labs are too far away. Equipment breaks down or is unreliable. If you just think of the sort of crises we have now in Chile and Haiti, it doesn’t really have to be the Third World. But if a hospital has no power, no clean water, pumps don’t run, nothing is going to work. You don’t have reagents. Much of the time people are dying because they’re not correctly diagnosed in the developing world.

Why can’t some of the Boston area biotechs produce drugs and vaccines for the Third World?

Well, I did (at Avant Immunotherapeutics Inc.), but I think I was always, you know, a bit of a lone star trying to do all that. It’s a very difficult business model. The technology will work perfectly well for preventing travelers’ diarrhea. As for saving the lives of children who are dying of diarrhea in developing countries, the approval system is different, and there’s no reimbursement at all. Investors want every dollar to work as hard. So they want you to follow the high-margin opportunities. And even though you could use the same technology for a low-margin opportunity, it’s very difficult to do it.

Can the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other nonprofits change that equation by offering the right incentives?

I think they’re already changing it. I mean, they give more money than really anybody except the US government. They operate like a country, in a way. We have been enormously glad to have a Gates Foundation grant that was actually given to Harvard University and we subcontract. . . . I think they’ve been transformative in this area.

Harvard last month granted you exclusive licensing rights to the diagnostic technologies from the labs of George Whitesides. What’s the significance of those licensing rights?

Enormous. Like any company, we have to control and protect our intellectual property. Of course, in the developing world, we won’t do that. Our aim is to give away these diagnostics. But universities want to make money from their tech transfer offices. So normally they would expect a royalty back when the product is finally approved and sold. Since ours won’t be sold, we have been given royalty-free rights. Now, if we do regular licensing deals with developed world big companies and money is made, we want to be sure the money comes back to Diagnostics For All to further our mission. But we would have to pay a portion of our royalties back to Harvard.

With the efforts of groups like yours, when will we start to see a sharp reduction in diseases like AIDS and malaria?

Well, I think that’s already happening. There’s a lot of credit to be given to bed nets and the big antiretrovirals. But we want to be sure that we harness the full power of these new technologies and not have people who are on antiretrovirals for AIDS dying of liver disease. We can test for that, and those people can be taken off it.