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>> I'm Janet Walkow, the Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer for the Drug Dynamics Institute.
I also teach a variety of courses, including Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurship.
As soon as I walked on campus, I realized that to really be part of the campus I wanted to teach and connect with the students.
So the first course that I taught was a freshman signature course.
And I designed this course to really help students understand, whether they were scientists or not scientists, that everyone can understand drug development.
So I actually requested that the folks who enrolled in the course not have a scientific background.
They learned about drug development in a way that they can now, you know, open up a newspaper.
Listen to the TV or the radio and hear about what's going on with drug products and understand it.
And really know how to talk to their healthcare professionals and to be a savvy consumer [music and background conversations].
When I first started doing drug development in the pharmaceutical industry in the 1980s, it cost about $100 million to bring one new product to market.
Today it costs somewhere between $1 and $1.8 billion.
There are many factors to consider when a pharmaceutical company is determining what they want to develop as part of their portfolio.
When you look at a pharmaceutical company, they will typically have one or more areas -- therapeutic areas they're called --
in which they're conducting their research and development.
The first decision may be based on what the therapeutic area is.
But more and more that is not the only factor that they're looking at.
They're really looking at the money.
Many of the large pharmaceutical companies don't want to spend the money involved, unless they know they can make that money back before the patent expires [music].
There are companies that they will create a threshold.
They'll say, well I only want a blockbuster.
How do you define a blockbuster drug?
Well it's something -- a rough definition would be something that makes over a billion dollars a year.
There's a downside to that.
Because there's probably people that have a condition that really could benefit from a new medicine.
However, if it's not going to be a blockbuster, some companies won't look at it.
They just won't look at it.
But that is what has actually helped drive innovation, not only to academic institutions such as the University of Texas, but has really fostered and really spurred on a lot
of startups and entrepreneurial efforts for drug development.
Acadademitions [phonetic] and startups will pick up that slack.
What isn't big enough fish for Pharma is plenty big for those in the university and start up arena.
Let me give you an example.
They have patented a way to make nano particles.
These are very, very small particles.
And what's special about what they have done, is that they have found ways to take compounds that are insoluble -- and that's always a big problem.
If you have an insoluble compound, a lot of folks will just put it on the shelf and say, well good try, but that's not going to work.
Because if it doesn't dissolve in your body it can't work.
They have found a way to take insoluble compounds and make them soluble.
But also make them into these tiny, little nano particles.
But what do you do with them?
Well, for example what you could do is deliver a drug directly into your lungs.
You may want to do this when someone has a lung transplant to help fight rejection.
So typically what they would do is to take a tablet that goes all throughout the body, and can have a lot of toxic effects.
But using the same drug and putting it in these little nano particles that were developed here, it can be inhaled and go directly to the lung.
The patient has to take a much lower dose.
You don't see the kind of toxic effects.
And everyone's happier.
So you can have a very direct impact on patients with the inventions that are discovered here at the university.
We have essentially created a small drug development company of sorts.
And -- or at least the elements of a company.
And researchers on campus, at other institutions and small to midsize companies have open access to this.
And that is what is going to help propel the research and innovation that can lead to new medical therapies that will benefit patients.
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