Grass-roots entrepreneurship complements traditional top-down innovation in lung and breast cancer

Khalil B Ramadi; Rhea Mehta; David He; Sichen Chao; Zen Chu; Rifat Atun; Freddy T Nguyen

doi:10.1038/s41746-021-00545-x

Grass-roots entrepreneurship complements traditional top-down innovation in lung and breast cancer

NPJ Digit Med. 2022 Jan 21;5(1):10. doi: 10.1038/s41746-021-00545-x.

Authors

Khalil B Ramadi^{1

2

3

4

5}, Rhea Mehta^{6

7}, David He^{6

8}, Sichen Chao^{6

8}, Zen Chu^{6

9}, Rifat Atun¹⁰, Freddy T Nguyen^{6

11

12}

Affiliations

¹ Hacking Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. kramadi@mit.edu.
² School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. kramadi@mit.edu.
³ Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA. kramadi@mit.edu.
⁴ Division of Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE. kramadi@mit.edu.
⁵ Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, New York, NY, USA. kramadi@mit.edu.
⁶ Hacking Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ Department of Economics, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA.
⁸ School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁹ Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁰ Division of Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
¹¹ Innovation Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹² Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Abstract

The majority of biomedical research is funded by public, governmental, and philanthropic grants. These initiatives often shape the avenues and scope of research across disease areas. However, the prioritization of disease-specific funding is not always reflective of the health and social burden of each disease. We identify a prioritization disparity between lung and breast cancers, whereby lung cancer contributes to a substantially higher socioeconomic cost on society yet receives significantly less funding than breast cancer. Using search engine results and natural language processing (NLP) of Twitter tweets, we show that this disparity correlates with enhanced public awareness and positive sentiment for breast cancer. Interestingly, disease-specific venture activity does not correlate with funding or public opinion. We use outcomes from recent early-stage innovation events focused on lung cancer to highlight the complementary mechanism by which bottom-up "grass-roots" initiatives can identify and tackle under-prioritized conditions.