[Daily Ranting]You don't want to be stuck there_Chelsea

Stuck by Madamepsychosis by creative commmons from Flickr

Later today I went to a seminar by a professor from School of Pharmacology, about the potential of developing vege-product/diet/food into chemoprevention tools for cancers. It sounded fancy to me at first. But then as the talk went on, I found several interesting yet dismayed points:

1. "Prove it to me!"
As an observer, I was sitting there silently yet ranting in my mind: well, you said it's working, but... show me the evidence... or at least something, something to get me willing enough to take it. They were stuck in the process of getting funding from every corner: NIH, industry, private sector..., but still struggling with getting enough to afford the clinical trials. One of the key problem (and obvious too) is, since it's a prevention medicine, how could you prove it, while the whole purpose is to get something "not happening" (think about the story of condom in terms of HIV infection). Therefore, if I am a potential customer, what's your selling point? "It's gonna do good to your health!" Well, how about I just adopt more fresh vege and fruits, and less sugar? Anyway both approaches are not provable.


2. "Do I really need it?"
One of the very interesting pattern I found is, that we scientists are always inclined to dig deep in almost any points (data, hypothesis-driven, mechanisms, chemical structures, enzymatic processes, etc), but loosened up in terms of "be human-wise". If patients/healthy customers have so much options already in daily life, then "what's the point" of pushing this discovery out from lab? A concentrated vege juice? A new flavored vege smoothie?

Instead of pursuing clinical trials-medicine-pharma-FDA... the whole complicated process which takes forever, I am thinking about two potential ways to follow up:
(1) What about just make it as a selling point? By marketing and pitching to nutrition food/drink industry about this compound, from whatever resource, backed up by "enough" scientific studies, and educate our generations: hey, this such vege is very very good:) It's so good that you may want to have concentrated elements in your drinks/packaged food. And that's it. Sell it small, without ambitious pharmaceutical long term goal.
(2) Specify clearly who would care. I know it's good for my health, but there must be a subgroup of customers who will care more, and somehow fit into the potential buyer category: maybe eating no matter how much this and such vege is not enough for preventing, given their parameters of potentially developing such and this diseases; maybe the drugs on market are way to expensive; maybe to those who cannot get access to this particular vege... In one word, get to a clear subcategory of the customers, and then think about how to make the product.

The whole mentality process I felt from the seminar was like roller coaster. They were exited to find it, and they tried and struggled to push forward, they begged for money, they got rejections and still strived forward, with publications over two decades. But still, the invention stayed within the laboratory. It's time to shift the perspective, and think about it. At least that's what I got from the one hour presentation:)

Chelsea