Ideas change everything

A bold new way to fund drug research

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Roger Stein |

TED@State Street Boston

• November 2013

Believe it or not, about 20 years' worth of potentially life-saving drugs are sitting in labs right now, untested. Why? Because they can't get the funding to go to trials; the financial risk is too high. Roger Stein is a finance guy, and he thinks deeply about mitigating risk. He and some colleagues at MIT came up with a promising new financial model that could move hundreds of drugs into the testing pipeline.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Believe it or not, about 20 years' worth of potentially life-saving drugs are sitting in labs right now, untested. Why? Because they can't get the funding to go to trials; the financial risk is too high. Roger Stein is a finance guy, and he thinks deeply about mitigating risk. He and some colleagues at MIT came up with a promising new financial model that could move hundreds of drugs into the testing pipeline.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

About the speaker

Financial management expert

See speaker profile

Roger Stein wants to bring financial engineering to the world of drug funding.

Learn more

Can Financial Engineering Cure Cancer?

Watch this TEDx talk from Roger's collaborator, Andrew Lo of MIT

About TED Institute

Every year, TED works with a group of select companies and foundations to identify internal ideators, inventors, connectors, and creators. Drawing on the same rigorous regimen that has prepared speakers for the TED main stage, TED Institute works closely with each partner, overseeing curation and providing intensive one-on-one talk development to sharpen and fine tune ideas. The culmination is an event produced, recorded, and hosted by TED, generating a growing library of valuable TED Talks that can spur innovation and transform organizations.

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