Backyard Biotechs: One step up from the hacker



A chemical that catches iron



I’ve had several readers comment to me something along these lines: “Yeah, it would be really cool to discover a drug or something, but Merck isn’t going to develop a drug from a hacker.”  Maybe not, but check out this article from the June issue of The Atlantic describing a couple of California biotechs who are taking the virtual approach to drug development (link).  FerroKin is developing an orally available iron chelator (a chemical that traps and removes iron) as a treatment for iron overload in patients requiring recurrent blood transfusions.  The need for this type of drug is pretty high in this patient population but the overall market size is small.  Big Pharma won’t touch something like this because it wouldn’t be worth it to them.  However, to a small, virtual biotech this represents a significant opportunity.  Synthesizing iron chelators requires some sophisticated chemical equipment but I think it could be done relatively easily in a chemical hackerspace by experienced chemists (I would probably blow up half the lab trying to get the hot water on).  Furthermore, designing these drugs is fairly straightforward as well.  The iron that needs to be bound is in the blood (this makes it WAY easier since the drug doesn’t have to go into cells) and the rules about metal chelation are pretty well understood.  The odds of finding compounds for lead development are quite good.  FerroKin (link) raised some venture capital money to do preclinical and early clinical trials (all outsourced to contract research companies so FerroKin didn’t do any of it on their own) and the results so far appear promising.

I could definitely see this happening more frequently.  The process might even be similar to trying to publish a young adult novel about some biopunks.  Something gets tested at a hackerspace and looks promising.  After the intellectual property rights are secured, the inventor shops it around to ‘agents’ who are actively looking for scientific projects of that type.  Agents sign the investor and then pitch the package to virtual biotechs for possible development.  It won’t be easy at all as the bar will be very high, but a similar process is happening right now at Big Pharma (except that the projects are coming from academic labs and not amateur scientists).  I look forward to the day when all the starving writers trying to write The Next Great Novel will be fighting for sofa space at the coffee shop with the starving drug hunters trying to design The Next Big Drug.