In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have published a pair of studies in a COVID-19 special issue of the Harvard Data Science Review, freely available via open access, describing new methods for accelerating drug approvals during pandemics and for providing more accurate measures of the probabilities of success for clinical trials of vaccines and other anti-infective therapies.

A study emerging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the Harvard Data Science Review has detailed strategies for accelerating the regular pace of regulatory approvals in order to create a faster access route to essential treatments and prophylactics during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published a pair of studies in a COVID-19 special issue of the Harvard Data Science Review, freely available via open access, describing new methods for accelerating drug approvals during pandemics and for providing more accurate measures of the probabilities of success for clinical trials of vaccines and other anti-infective therapies.

As gene-based vaccines are being designed and tested at unprecedented speeds to fight COVID-19, scientists wonder if this will be the technology’s make-or-break moment.

Watch the MIT Industrial Liaison Program with professors Yossi Sheffi, Alex Pentland, and Andrew Lo for a special webinar highlighting the impacts of COVID-19 on business.

Topics include:
* What should firms be doing with their supply chain now?
* Who is most at risk in your organization? What should firms be doing to prevent catastrophic spread of the virus inside their organizations?
* What do executives need to be watching now in financial markets?

Andrew W. Lo's presentation slides available HERE

See overview and agenda on the MIT ILP website

LAFAYETTE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Journal Of Investment Management (JOIM) and New Frontier Advisors LLC today announced the winners of the 2019 Harry M. Markowitz Award. The winners are finalized by a Special Selection Panel comprised of Nobel Prize Laureates.

The Markowitz Award is sponsored jointly by JOIM and New Frontier Advisors and recognizes the seminal and transcendent impact of Dr. Markowitz’s work as a financial economist and mathematician on both theoretical finance and the practice of asset management. The award was established to honor his legacy and to support future research and innovation in practical asset management. Candidates for the annual award are chosen from among papers published in JOIM in a calendar year. An honorarium of $10,000 is bestowed for the winning paper. Two additional finalist papers receive a Special Distinction Award along with a $5,000 honorarium.

2019 Markowitz Award Winners

This year’s top recognition was awarded to “Funding Long Shots,” by John Hull, Professor of Derivatives and Risk Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Andrew W. Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Roger M. Stein, Adjunct Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

In this episode of Bold Voices, John Doyle, Global Healthcare Innovation Lead, sat down with Dr. Andrew Lo, Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, to discuss innovative solutions that better address affordability and increase patient access to breakthrough medicines.

“In this country, we've used the inflammatory term ‘death panels' to hamper, frankly, the discussion that needs to happen with regard to drug pricing,” says Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at MIT Sloan School of Management.

People in the Massachusetts biotechnology sector figured that the record-setting success of 2018 would be hard to match. So far, they're proving right.

After collectively raising $4.8 billion of venture capital last year, an all-time high, Bay State biotechs are on pace to raise less than $3 billion in 2019, according to a report published Tuesday by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a leading industry group.

Elizabeth Steele, MassBio's vice president of programs and global affairs, said the venture climate is merely "coming back to normal" after an "insane" 2018. A total of about $3 billion would be in line with the average from 2015 to 2017.

But Andrew Lo, a biotech investor who directs the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, said he is "a bit more concerned."

The MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering (LFE) and Informa Pharma Intelligence have launched an initiative to provide timely and accurate estimates of the risks and benefits of clinical trials to the entire life sciences ecosystem.

Project ALPHA (Analytics for Life-sciences Professionals and Healthcare Advocates) aims to help investors, payers, regulators, and biopharmaceutical companies better evaluate the opportunities of biomedical research and development.

Project ALPHA’s first project will be the further development of clinical success rate metrics, based on algorithms developed by MIT researchers and published in Biostatistics in January 2018.

The MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering (LFE) and Informa Pharma Intelligence announced Project ALPHA (Analytics for Life-sciences Professionals and Healthcare Advocates), an initiative to provide timely and more accurate estimates of the risks and rewards of clinical trials to the entire biopharma ecosystem. The goal of Project ALPHA is to accelerate biomedical innovation by helping investors, regulators, payers, and biopharmaceutical companies better assess the opportunities of biomedical R&D, allowing all stakeholders to manage their investments more efficiently.

"More accurate risk metrics will eventually lead to fewer big failures, faster approval times, cost savings to the entire healthcare system and more investment capital for developing breakthrough therapies," says Andrew W. Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the LFE, "all of which means more, and better, therapies to patients sooner."

A new generation of philanthropists, whose wealth was created via entrepreneurship in technology-driven fields, has the unique opportunity to make a real difference in speeding the pace of progress in the fight against cancer. Not content with having hospital pavilions named for them or with giving large, open-ended gifts for academic research, they want to use their wealth to have a direct and visible impact on patients’ health. Research we have conducted has revealed a variety of new, highly impactful investment approaches that can help accelerate the pace of the development, approval, and commercialization of new cancer therapies. By embracing these new approaches this new generation of philanthropists has the opportunity to truly help cure cancer.

Andrew W. Lo é um autor prolífico. Professor de finanças na Sloan School of Management, do Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), ganhou reconhecimento do público, por causa de seu livro A non-random walk down Wall Street ( Uma caminhada não aleatória por Wall Street , sem edição em português), e dos profissionais, por seus artigos em periódicos importantes de finanças e economia. Lo conquistou muitos prêmios em sua carreira.

The p-value.

Statisticians use it. Non-statisticians have heard of it (likely in the context of the standard threshold of p = 0.05). While it’s not the only component of a clinical trial design, the p-value helps determine the maximum acceptable level of uncertainty associated with clinical evidence and, in a way, the fate of patient access to a new medical device.

But, is the traditional 0.05 threshold too restrictive for the patient populations willing to accept more uncertainty, depriving them of treatment options? Is it too permissive for other patient populations? Can we optimize clinical trial design by considering patients’ urgency for new therapeutic options, as well as their willingness to accept uncertainty?

Basic biomedical research may be in its most fruitful period in history: each year, with new technologies helping scientists advance our understandings of the underlying basis of human disease. At the same time, it’s increasingly difficult to undertake the process of translating promising biomedical discoveries into new drugs or diagnostics, especially those that will help relatively small numbers of people. “The problem rests not in the science,” says Whitehead Institute Founding Member Harvey Lodish, “but with the lack of funding for early-stage development.”