Funding research in the new (poorer) world

The world has changed. Money is tight, the large foundations and governmental granting agencies are risk averse........which means senior scientist will get the $. 

This means that innovation is going to die. Once you get to be a senior scientist you don't have time to fail you have to feed the beast. I think the best allegory is Wall St.- Yes "to big to fail, I need a bail-out Wall St." is exactly what most large labs in the world are!

Rather than launch on some Quixotic diatribe about how bad this is for health and science as endeavor,  Ill just talk about how to make it irrelevant.

The answer is small foundations. They have the focus, passion and community to start a real long term relationship with young scientists. Brand new, too ignorant to know better scientists who got their own lab by being the most innovative and best prepared post-doc is exactly the one who will take the chance-if their is money involved. 

All foundations seem to be focusing on drug discovery and biomarkers. This is a great space for smaller disease focused foundations to occupy. The problem is that most of the organizations do not have the gobs of money to follow it through in a comprehensive manner.

Getting effective novel therapeutics requires engagement of talented, creative scientists. 

For disease focused research foundations this can be difficult. In the current economic environment foundations must have some method to "hook" scientists whether it be large per year grants, limited restrictions on spending or speed of review. 

For rare diseases this means getting in their early phase when they shape and limit the vision of their lab. Rare diseases research requires passion and a way to find general funding that will maintain the lab. 

In this day and age when peer based mentoring is sadly lacking a foundation that can provide some guidance on where/how their researchers can leverage funding and expertise can gain loyalty and expand by word of mouth. This will then lead to larger "sexy" studies and fund-raising. 

This kind of thinking can work hand in hand with maximizing fund raising as you can tell fund raisers that a large portion of their money goes directly to attempting to cure or ease their disease rather than greater good. 

Overall:Small foundations should look to maximize the effect of their funds to effect change in their specific disease. 
Through targeting 2 areas of research:
1 Cellular characterization of the disease (ie what are properties that are different between normal & disease)
2 Drug/therapeutic design and testing-no matter how speculative. This assumes that the idea or test system can pass peer review 


The 2 areas would have separate competitions, 2 separate funding paradigms:

1 Short funding cycle-a micro-finance model. Short grants with quick turn around. 2 year grant with  a hard progress report with mutually agreed upon measurable progress. 

2 A prestige grant larger "no questions asked" funding 5 year funding with no reporting for 2 years. Again mutually agreed upon defined goals that MUST be met to receive final 3 yrs of $    


The grants would be open academia and small biotech. There would also be a bonus for academic lead Pharma-academic RFPs. There would be a significant and clear partnership NOT just "in-kind" contributions. 


The research and fund-raising would have a high degree of back and forth. The foundation would hold a stakeholders conference where selected funded scientist would come and explain the state of research in layman's terms. 


There has to be greater out-reach from the scientists at foundations. The Office of the CSO should engage in various forms of social media to engage and find funds (with the guidance of the Exec board). This can no longer be left to that summer intern who just finished Bio 101. The public is too smart for that and frankly if I was looking for a small foundation for funding I want to know that the scientists are engaged. It should be an expectation not just a hope that scientific merit is judged by scientists.