Founder and Director of Stanford University’s SPARK program Daria Mochly-Rosen shares how she has liberated potential drug discoveries from academic research to industry, and discusses the countless, surprising lessons she has learned along the way.
Andrew W. Lo, PhD, is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering. In this video, Professor Lo discusses the “valley of death” in the drug development process from a health economist’s perspective, and how SPARK as an academic translational research program is working to bridge this gap by improving and de-risking the drug discovery and development process.
Janet Woodcock, MD, is the Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this video, Dr. Woodcock discusses critical areas in the drug development process that need academic researchers’ input, such as advancing evidentiary standards for biomarkers, improving clinical trial design and infrastructure, how to target small populations using precision medicine, and others. She highlights SPARK as a prime example of an academic program focused on training and engaging researchers to translate their basic research to real-world problems to improve health.