Science & Technology

This article outlines current U.S. government processes to bolster biosecurity and biosafety measures and summarizes five key findings from biosecurity experts.

As inventions go, the Internet stacks up with the best of them: the lightbulb, the automobile, even fire. In its first thirty years, the Internet’s worldwide adoption and breadth of application has exceeded any other technological advance in history. It expands our reach by bringing people, experiences, and things to us with the click of a mouse. It connects us to an increasing number of gadgets, from smartphones to voice kiosks and soon self-driving vehicles that will no doubt converse with us while we commute, happily oblivious to the traffic around us. We revel in our newfound agility and versatility. Importantly, our precious network kept us sane during a worldwide pandemic and enabled the world to work remotely while most of its population was frozen at home. For resilience against catastrophes alone, the Internet has become indispensable.

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) represent a global health emergency, affecting millions of individuals and imposing significant economic burdens. Despite increased funding and government initiatives, effective therapies remain elusive, and NDD research lags behind other fields. This report argues for a simplified, accelerated, and transparent unified approach to NDD research, building on lessons from other fields and industries.

In the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases (NDD) in the United States, affecting approximately 10.5 million individuals. This number is predicted to triple in the next 30 years.¹ However, in comparison to other disease areas such as oncology, the approval of NDD drugs has been relatively limited. Our team has explored the NDD drug development ecosystem from three perspectives: stakeholders, funding, and policy. This article summarizes our key findings and presents a case study to suggest that the scarcity of new drug development may be attributable to insufficient basic scientific research. Finally, we outline our objectives for the upcoming semester.

In recent years, there has been an increased focus on finding treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, as the prevalence of these diseases continues to rise globally. This blog aims to provide an overview of the sources and trends of funding for neurodegenerative disease research, with a particular focus on comparing funding for these diseases with that of other classes of diseases. By examining historical funding trends and the current sources of funding, we seek to shed light on the current state of the funding ecosystem for neurodegenerative disease research. We will also explore how funding is allocated across different types of neurodegenerative diseases and discuss potential bottlenecks in the funding process that may be hindering progress in the development of therapies.

*This blog is part of a series titled TAPP for Neurodegenerative Diseases Drug Discovery: Mapping the ecosystem

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) are a class of disorders that cause the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, leading to declines in cognitive and physical abilities. Drug discovery and development for these diseases is a complex, multi-stakeholder process involving a variety of entities across the United States, including government agencies, businesses, research institutions, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations. These stakeholders interact with each other at various stages of the non-linear cycle of drug development, which typically involves a range of activities including pre-clinical research, clinical trials, regulatory approval, and commercialization.

Given the complexity of this process and the challenges involved in developing effective treatments for NDDs, it is important to better understand the role of different stakeholders and the potential barriers they face. This blog aims to provide a deeper examination of the various stakeholders involved in NDD drug discovery and development, and to offer an initial hypothesis on key challenges that may be contributing to the lack of disease-altering therapies for these conditions.

*This blog is part of a series titled TAPP for Neurodegenerative Diseases Drug Discovery: Mapping the ecosystem

As highlighted in our initial blog post, the neurodegenerative disease (NDD) drug development space has seen little progress compared to other disease areas such as cancer and immunology. A number of factors contribute to a lack of curative or disease-altering therapies addressing NDD including a poor understanding of the pathophysiology of most NDDs and historically lower investment as opposed to other disease areas. However, the use of policy instruments has the potential to drive progress and improve NDD drug development. This article introduces our research on the impact of key policies on NDD drug development. It also presents our initial findings on the effectiveness of current policies and identifies areas where further action is needed.

*This blog is part of a series titled TAPP for Neurodegenerative Diseases Drug Discovery: Mapping the ecosystem

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDD) such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS represent a global health crisis affecting more than nine million people in the United States alone. NDDs are caused by progressive loss of central nervous system neurons - currently, there is no cure to reverse this loss. The only approved therapies are palliative or mildly reduce some symptoms. In this blog, the author introduces ways technology and public policy can improve the drug discover process to "cure the uncureable" - setting the stage for his larger research project this academic year.

This report is an urgent warning of where we are headed if we maintain our current trajectory of augmenting our public space with trackers of all kinds. In this report, I outline how current “smart city” technologies can watch you. I argue that all “smart city” technology trends toward corporate and state surveillance and that if we don’t stop and blunt these trends now that totalitarianism, panopticonism, discrimination, privatization, and solutionism will challenge our democratic possibilities. This report examines these harms through cautionary trends supported by examples from this last year and provides 10 calls to action for advocates, legislatures, and technology companies to prevent these harms. If we act now, we can ensure the technology in our public spaces protect and promote democracy and that we do not continue down this path of an elite few tracking the many. 

National security structures envisioned in the 20th century are inadequate for the cyber threats that America faces in the 21st century. These structures, created to address strategic, external threats on one end, and homeland security emergencies on the other, cannot protect us from ambient cyber conflict, because they were designed for different times and threats. Our nation—comprising the federal government, private sector companies, critical infrastructure operators, state and local governments, nonprofits and universities, and even private citizens—are constantly under attack by a myriad of cyber actors with ever-increasing capabilities.