Last year, in my very first post, I mentioned how my country has one of the lowest investment in research and development in the region. And yet, amazing research and promising technologies have arisen within Chile’s borders, like the case of Andes’ Biotechnologies I recently covered, and the recognition that Cartier gave to a brilliant Chilean biochemist, Komal Dadlani, for her efforts in democratizing science worldwide. And, like them, there are thousands of Chilean scientists making their best effort to contribute to the betterment of our country, in spite of the harsh conditions and harsher future prospects.

This constant struggle has reached a tipping point

Under the motto “Chile needs science” (hashtag #ChileNecesitaCiencia), and dressed in their labcoats, Chilean scientists have been gathering in front of the presidential palace and on social networks to oppose the government’s decision to not raise the country’s budget for research and development (again), and the reduction of science-related scholarships (again) and the delay in government grants and contests (again).

What started with the resignation of Francisco Brieva, former president of the National Committee for Scientific and Technological Research, has become a sort of revolution, crystallized in a complaint letter harshly titled “Our governments have chosen ignorance.” The letter has been signed by more than 2,000 scientists, including six National Applied Science and Technologies prize awardees, and around 20 presidents and representatives of scientific societies in the country. The outrage may have been fueled by Dr. Brieva resigning after working six months without pay. That alone should give you an idea of how bad it is to be a scientist here.

Science has become art in the worst possible way: nobody thinks you should be paid fairly for it. After all, spending 18 hours a day in front of a canvas or a petri dish cannot be considered “real” jobs, right? When my startup publicized a two-month internship offer for a 20-year old, I got emails from PhD holders saying they would happily work for the less-than-$200 per month we were offering. They would have made more money at McDonald’s.

Do this make you want to put on your labcoat and hoist an angry sign? We could continue down that road, of course, but it does not lead very far. What we need to ask ourselves is: how can we move past outrage and become a constructive force? What can we, as a country, do to overcome this predicament?

Luckily, some of the country’s most brilliant scientists – names also seen on the open letter mentioned above – have given this issue more than a passing thought. Here is what they propose:

In the short term, and so that the discussions around the topic can once again become polite (in other words, no more protestors singing, “All scientists are going to quit / If you insist in paying us like ____”), there has to be an increase in the country’s budget for science and technology, and the conversation should finally be directed toward creating a Ministry of Science and Technology. Once this entity has been created, we could design a funding entity that goes in accordance both with what the country really needs in terms of new economic opportunities and of available human resources. What is arguably among the most brilliant people in the country’s workforce is being completely underused and even at risk of becoming idle. This is the perfect time to start again and aim for newer, more appropriate, better things.

After all, consider what Chile has managed to accomplish even with such harsh conditions. Universal cancer drugs starting their clinical trial stage, minimally invasive magnetic surgical systems waiting for FDA approval, apps that eliminate scientific illiteracy already undergoing pilot studies, and other cases of Chilean biotech that have started getting noticed worldwide.

Just imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to use our time and energy to engage in unnecessary battles. We all know what we need, and we agree on what is best for Chile. The only thing our nation must do now, once and for all, is to choose knowledge over ignorance.

Emilia Diaz

On October 25^th, 2013 I blogged about standing up for preclinical tests, written after the Instituto Royal in Brazil was invaded by vandals. They destroyed all the laboratories at the Institute, stole more than two hundred beagles and forced the Institute to close its doors. Bruce Alberts and ten eminent scientists earlier wrote an editorial for Science with a similar title: Standing up for GMOs. This after activists destroyed Golden Rice experiments at the Philippines International Rice Institute. Golden Rice is waiting to be released commercially, while thousands die every year, blind, due to the lack of Vitamin A.

Vandals again attacked in Brazil. I call them terrorists, but either way, they invaded the premises of Field Experiment Station of Futuragene in the State of São Paulo and destroyed 14 years of science accumulated by this company concerning eucalyptus GM. About 1,000 women from Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, or MST, in early March occupied the scientific research center of Futuragene to protest against the possible introduction of genetically modified eucalyptus trees in Brazil. They claim the honey of the GM eucalyptus is contaminated by pesticides. The eucalyptus could have been designed to be resistant to insects using a Bt gene, similar to a dozen plants worldwide. But these, in fact, were produced to reduce cellulose and shorten the life cycle of the tree. BIO, the lobby group for biotechnology, came out against this action.

Pesticides have been used since the end of the Second World War, when DDT was discovered and commercially used to control lice and later malaria. Sixty years later the European Union issued a partial ban on three neonicotinoids that were suspected to harm bees, butterflies and other non-target species. Cohort studies in the United States are beginning to map out the troubling effect of pesticides on the developing brain: exposure to pesticides could perhaps cause autism and intellectual deficiencies, said Phillip Landrigan, director of the Environmental Center for Youth Health at Mount Sinai.

Also, more than 300,000 people are believed to commit suicide every year by swallowing pesticides, a big problem in Asia. There is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to pesticides, yet it seems like we’ll never be without them.

The MST has never acted against the overuse of pesticides. Instead, the resistance to genetically modified crops in the world is scientifically inexplicable, and it seems to be far from an end, regardless that there has never been a recorded adverse effect to humans, animals or the environment.

Of course new technology always dislodges one in the market or prevents growth of ascending technologies. In this case, GMOs prevent the growth of “organicos.” The father of “organicos” is Prince Charles. He funds NGOs in Brazil to battle GMOs. It is hard to believe that activists are working without any financial benefit. There is no free lunch.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

The world has its eyes on West Africa and the UN World Health Organization has declared the spread of the Ebola virus in West African states an international health emergency. The Ebola virus, a single-strand RNA filovirus and only 19 kilobase pairs long, has claimed 1,000+ lives in West Africa this year (out of about 2,000 cases). The virus causes fever, central nervous system damage and impaired blood clotting. The virus is highly contagious (through bodily fluids) and there is no known medical intervention approved for treatment other than rest and oral rehydration.

Due to the fact that outbreaks are rare (the virus was first discovered and classified in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaire), unknown root causes, highly contagious and no medical treatment exists, the outbreaks elicit one predominant emotion: fear. Recommendations for caring for Ebola-stricken patients include isolation, protective gear for health workers and clean washing. However, in many resource-low settings, where medical personnel are scant and already stretched, frontline health workers in rural communities are not fully equipped to respond to the outbreak (they lack training, diagnostic equipment and protective gear).  

Global citizens are looking for public health leadership, from country Heads of State, from Centres of Disease Control, to the WHO and to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Why are there no cures for this disease? Why do we not understand it? Given the speed of technological innovation and biomedical research, perhaps rightly, the public have begun to expect overnight medical cures to almost any ailment.

However, the R&D funding for neglected diseases of the poor is simply not there. There is a clear lack of economic incentives for innovation into a sporadic, rare disease that disproportionately affects rural populations in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa with weak healthcare systems. For example, out of 1,393 new chemical entities marketed between 1975 and 1999, only 16 (1.15%) were for neglected diseases. The statistics since the turn of the Millennium do not improve much. Eleven years after the Millennium Development Goals were established, out of the 850 new therapeutic products registered in 2000-2011, 37 (4%) were indicated for neglected diseases[1]. The Ebola virus is very much a neglected disease. With commercialization R&D projects in drugs and vaccines costing hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, the business model of biotech and pharma cannot embrace the long-term risk management and capital requirements of R&D into rare viruses. With end patients having little purchasing power to buy the developed therapeutics (resulting in limited commercial markets), many manufacturers give up the R&D game early.

Just because diseases of the poor are neglected commercially, it does not mean there are zero scientific leads. A number of life science companies have sprung into action this past week responding to the global call and urgent need to contain this outbreak. Political pressure backed by government funding and the return of a menacing disease have brought stakeholders back to research and development. These companies include:

• GlaxoSmithKline: Acquired a preclinical candidate from its Okairos buyout last year that has shown early promise in animal models. It is now working with the NIH to accelerate it into Phase I trials in humans in 2015.
• Johnson & Johnson’s Crucell Vaccine Unit: Also collaborating with NIH on a vaccine covering Ebola and Marburg to head into Phase I trials in 2015/2016.
• Mapp Biopharmaceutical has supplied ZMapp, an experimental drug, to two Americans infected with Ebola who have been taken to Atlanta for treatment. The US Department of Defense plans to award a contract allowing Mapp to accelerate clinical work.
• Vaxart, a California company, worked on Ebola and Marburg vaccines two years ago but ended its R&D work due to lack of funding and prioritization of other disease indications for its platform, including seasonal influenza.
• Tekmira, a Canadian company, has seen its share price soar on the FDA decision to revise a hold on its experimental Ebola drug (to a partial hold) that started in human clinical testing in January. The hold is foucsed on safety criteria on dosing concerns.

The CEOs of these companies are aware that the public’s interest alone does not sustain a risky R&D critical path into a new vaccine or drug. CEOs also look to governments, WHO and Heads of State for global leadership in policy setting, in strengthening in health systems and investing in biomedical research in times of disease control and outbreak alike. CEOs of the company above will look to collaborate with government agencies and academic research institutions to share resources and progress clinical work faster than if left to their own internal company rankings based on net present value estimates.

To the public and taxpayers: There are no overnight magic tricks in drug discovery or vaccine commercialization.  Infectious diseases in our globalized world is everyone’s concern.  We should be mentally prepared to invest in R&D for the long-run and aim for our best response to each and every disease threat.

Julia Fan Li

The threat of rising ocean levels.

The whole world gathered in Copenhagen recently for the XV COP for Climatic Changes. On the agenda was how to cope with the rise in CO₂ emissions, which, in addition to ocean acidification, could elevate the ocean level as much as 60 cm by the end of the century. This will jeopardize those living on islands and along shorelines – it’s estimated 100 million people may be menaced. In fact, humans are pumping 7 Gt of CO₂ in the atmosphere yearly. The level of CO₂ in the atmosphere today is around 370 ppm – according to specialists, it needs to remain below 420 ppm through the end of this century to keep global warming below 2^oC. Most solutions to reduce this trend are not short-term ones. An integrated approach to carbon abatement in the automotive sector could reduce global passenger vehicle greenhouse emissions by 2.2 Gt by 2030, much of it using proven technologies. Sugarcane-based ethanol produced in Brazil on 8 million Ha can be substantially increased, but that must be done without harming the environment. The ethanol produced from 200 million tons of corn in the US will help reduce greenhouse emission by car. Together both countries supply today only a fraction of what will be needed to replace the automotive fossil fuel in years to come.

This means abatement will not come from first-generation biofuels alone, but from a combination of second generation biofuel, traffic flow shifts and a mix of several other technologies. Carbon capture and storage can handle a few million metric tons of CO₂ /year, while 6 billion metric tons of coal are burned each year, producing 18 billion tons of CO₂.

Brazil hopes to revert deforestation in the Amazon that in the last decades claimed an area larger than Germany, according to the National Institute of Air Space – INPE. To accomplish this, the National Plan of Climatic Changes in Brazil was presented in Copenhagen, and it included efforts to achieve reforestation by 2020. This is a costly and long-term effort.

But deforestation is not a problem of the tropical forest alone. The vegetation of other ecosystem have been drastically reduced. There is just 7% of the original vegetation of Mata Atlântica left. The “Cerrado” is being destroyed at a rate of 0.5% a year. Inadequate use of this biome, for ethanol production, for instance, could destroy the 17% remaining of the Cerrado.

So what can be done if the level of CO2 cannot be kept under control? Geo-engineering proposes simulated volcanic eruptions to reduce the planet temperature and the level of ocean rise, based upon observations made after Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in June 1991. The eruption injected 10 Tg S in the stratosphere which caused detectable short-term cooling of the planet. One simulated injection of SO2 as an aerosol precursor equivalent to the Mount Pinatubo eruption every two years would cool the planet and consequently keep the sea level rise below 20 cm for centuries ahead, although the (relatively less deadly) ocean acidification due to CO₂  would persist.

I attended several discussions on this subject where most people accepted this fate, like lambs to the slaughterhouse. I proposed a strategy to desalinize sea water for irrigation or as a source of potable water where water is needed most: arid regions of developing countries. If the ocean level rises at a rate of 6 mm/year and since oceans occupy 360 x 10⁶ million Km², the amount of water to be desalinized is 2.16 x 10¹² m³. Considering that there is at least 10% of arid regions in the planet, this amount of water corresponds to only 14 mm of rain falling in 15 million square km².

So the amount of desalinized water from ocean rise alone may be insufficient to irrigate adequately large areas. Desalinized water could also be stored in reservoirs and underground aquifers. Potable water is scarce in many regions of the world, particularly in the Sub Sahara. Lack of good quality potable water threatens today the lives of 1.1 billion, according to UNEP worldwide, due to infections resulting from unclean drinking water. Throughout most of the world, the most common contamination of raw water sources is from human sewage and in particular human faecal pathogens and parasites. In 2006, waterborne diseases were estimated to cause 1.8 million deaths each year, while about 1.1 billion people lacked proper drinking water. Thus, it is clear that people in the developing world need to have access to good quality water in sufficient quantity, be able to purify water and distribute it.

Most desalination plants yield around 10⁷  m³ of desalinized water annually, in recent years. Alternative technologies may be needed to allow for desalination of 2.16 x 10¹² m³/year, the equivalent to 6mm of ocean rise/year. A project alone that desalinizes water from the Red Sea in Jordan has the capacity to produce 850 million m3 of desalinated water/year. That’s 10 times the yields of the recent past and the cost will be more than $10 billion but will benefit Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation of Jordan, the project may need to gather funds of close to $40 billion for its complete implementation; this is achievable if additional bidders come aboard.

The project will stand as a symbol of peace and cooperation in the Middle East. One project alone yielding 8.5 times 10 to the eight means 10,000 projects of this magnitude are needed. Ted Levin from the Natural Resources Defense Council says that more than 12,000 desalination plants already supply fresh water in 120 nations, mostly in The Middle East and Caribbean. The market for desalination according to analysts will grow substantially over the next decades.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro