Open Bench · Unit 8 of 8
Getting it to everyoneA cure nobody can afford is not a cure. So now what?
The unit most drug discovery courses skip. Students cost out a real therapy, discover what makes it expensive, and design an access plan for something that has not been invented yet.
Length
60 minutes
Tracks
Explorer (Grades 6–8) · Builder (Grades 9–12)
Cost
Free, permanently
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Objectives
By the end of the hour, a student can do each of these without being prompted.
- 01
Break the price of a therapy into its real components.
- 02
Explain what a cold chain is and why it decides who can be treated.
- 03
Describe what a patent does, what it is for, and what it costs society.
- 04
Design an access plan for a hypothetical therapy and defend its trade-offs.
Run of show
The hour, minute by minute.
Timings are a plan, not a rule. The segment most worth protecting when you run late is noted in the teacher notes below.
- 10 min
Price is not cost
Separate what a therapy costs to make from what it is sold for, and list everything in between. Students are usually astonished by how little of the price is manufacturing.
- 15 min
The cold chain
Trace a refrigerated biologic from factory to patient. Then redraw the same journey to a rural clinic with intermittent power. The therapy did not change and the outcome did.
- 15 min
Patents, honestly
Twenty years of exclusivity in exchange for publishing how you did it. Argue both sides. Insist students can state the strongest version of the case they disagree with.
- 15 min
Design the access plan
Teams take a hypothetical durable therapy and plan how it reaches a million people. Every plan involves a trade-off and every team must name theirs out loud.
- 5 min
Back to your Unit 1 map
Students revisit the drawing they made in week one. Most want to redraw it. That redraw is the course's real assessment.
The activity
The access plan
- 1
Take a hypothetical therapy that prevents eczema with one course in infancy.
- 2
Estimate the cost per dose, listing every assumption separately.
- 3
Decide whether it needs refrigeration, and redo the plan both ways.
- 4
Choose a licensing approach and write one paragraph on who it helps and who it does not.
- 5
State the single biggest weakness in your own plan.
What you hand in
A two-page access plan with a costing sheet and an honest statement of its weakest assumption.
Tools, all free
For the costing model.
Free. What the world has decided every health system should be able to supply.
Explorer track swap
Explorers run it as a map exercise, physically routing a therapy to four very different places and finding where it breaks down.
The misconception to expect
“Once a cure is discovered, getting it to people is somebody else's problem.”
Decisions made in the first week of discovery, about formulation, stability, and route of delivery, largely determine who will be able to get it a decade later. Access is a design constraint, not a distribution afterthought.
Teaching it
Notes from the room.
How you know it landed
A student has it when they can name a scientific decision made early in discovery that would later lock a population out of treatment.
- 01
This is the unit students remember. It is also the one most likely to turn a curious student into a committed one, so do not let it get cut when the schedule slips.
- 02
Comparing the Unit 1 and Unit 8 drawings side by side is the most convincing evidence of learning you will have. Collect both.
Reading for this unit
The papers behind the hour.
Optional for Explorers, expected for Builders. Full notes on each one are in the reading room.
- R-03
Omalizumab for the Treatment of Multiple Food Allergies
The New England Journal of Medicine · 2024 · Free full text
An anti-IgE antibody given for 16 to 20 weeks let 67 percent of treated children tolerate 600 mg of peanut protein without dose-limiting symptoms, against 33 percent on placebo, with protection extending to other foods at the same time.
- R-04
Phase 3 Trial of Epicutaneous Immunotherapy in Toddlers with Peanut Allergy
The New England Journal of Medicine · 2023
A wearable peanut patch worn daily for twelve months raised the reaction threshold in 67 percent of one-to-three-year-olds against 33.5 percent on placebo. Adverse events occurred in essentially every child in both groups, most of them local skin reactions.
- R-07
Gut microbiome in the first 1000 days and risk for childhood food allergy
Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology · 2024 · Free full text
Children who went on to develop food allergy had fewer Bifidobacterium and Clostridia species and a less mature infant microbiome. The protective effect appears to run through anti-inflammatory metabolites and regulatory T cells.