Dear FasterCures Community:

Welcome to 2021! I hope you and your family are happy and healthy as we embark on a new year full of opportunities to grow and learn from each other.

As I reflect on 2020, I do so with a profound sense of loss for the lives and livelihoods taken by COVID-19. I am constantly awed by how our community responded to these epic challenges and how the public is now appreciating—and benefiting from—the power of science to solve seemingly insurmountable challenges.

As much as I want to reflect on the year that was, I am eager to share details on the year that will be here at FasterCures, what we are building, and what you can expect from us.

With the ongoing pandemic as our backdrop, our mission remains clear. We will continue to elevate the patient’s voice in ways large and small, align incentives for R&D to ensure promising science is fully realized, and accelerate innovation.

At the same time, I am pleased to announce four new projects, each focused on supporting our mission while being responsive to our community's needs and insights. These include:

• Building an Early Warning System for Future Pandemics. Our work to understand and respond to COVID-19 remains a key focus area. We are convening the world’s top thinkers to help us build a framework for leveraging data and cutting-edge science to prevent the next biological threat.

• Protecting the Progress: COVID-19 Lessons Learned. There have been many positive takeaways from our community’s response to COVID-19. We believe the gains made in biomedical innovation, collaboration, and technology use should be well-understood, promoted, expanded, and protected. Yesterday, we published a report highlighting two dozen of these lessons and will be mobilizing our community to push for long-term reforms to ensure that progress continues.

• Addressing Antimicrobial Resistance. We are beginning our work to develop an approach to the challenges posed by antimicrobial resistance, looking at the role innovative financing models and patient community-building can play in creating better incentives for developing antibiotics. The project will engage health and finance experts to explore existing and potential funding models to support drug development, a critical aspect of this issue.

• Diversity and Representation in Clinical Trials. Finally, we are embarking on a critically important effort to drive understanding, engagement, and urgency around increasing diversity in clinical trials—how they are designed, recruited, and executed. If we are going to develop the next generation of treatments for patients, we must ensure that the R&D process reflects the needs of all, not the few.

There will be more to report in the months to come. Until then, thank you for being part of the FasterCures community, and I wish you and yours a happy and healthy 2021.

Best,
Esther Krofah
Executive Director
FasterCures, a Center of the Milken Institute