Janet Woodcock, the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration, says that not all Americans are benefiting from biomedical advances, the Los Angeles Times reports.
During the Breakthroughs in Medicine conference, Woodcock highlighted the difference between what researchers discover in the lab and what reaches patients in the clinic, according to the LA Times. She argued that the ultimate goal of clinical biomedical research is not to garner FDA approval or to advance knowledge, but is to improve human health.
"Is the guy living under the bridge going to get a $2 million CAR-T cell curative therapy?" she added, according to the LA Times. "If that guy can't get the drug, then we've failed."
To that end, she argued that numerous changes need to be made not only to academia to encourage collaboration, but also in drug development, where there is often much secrecy and high price tags. "You can't just develop breakthroughs and then throw them over the wall to practitioners," she said, according to the LA Times. "We need the whole system to evolve and change if we're going to do what we set out to do: help every patient feel better and live longer.