In medical research, failures are never a total loss, because knowing why treatments fail helps to develop more successful devices or drugs, Dr. Ashish Bhatia told Paradigm Outcomes’ eighth annual Innovation Symposium exploring outliers and medical innovation.

In the past 14 years of his research, Dr. Bhatia said only about 20 to 25 of the device and drug development programs he’s worked with have made it to market. For every 1 that makes it, 5 to 6 fail.

“The possibilities are found by working with scientists and bioengineers to see what they’re coming up with in their labs that could translate and help people in the clinic and at the bedside, including people who have had catastrophic injuries,” he said.

Serendipity in Smoke-Inhalation Treatment

“About 25% of drugs in the market now were found serendipitously,” said Dr. Bhatia, an internationally recognized expert in healthcare innovation, involved in the inception and development of numerous drugs and devices.

After receiving a call from a colleague, he began studying a drug for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) that wasn’t working out as planned.

As Dr. Bhatia learned more about this small protein, which has nearly no side effects or toxicity and helps block both lung inflammation and secretion, he was reminded of his experience as an Emergency Medical Technician. Smoke-inhalation injury was often a cause of death and of long-term morbidity. These injuries are common and have devastating results.

“Supportive care is the only therapy you have left,” Bhatia said. “You give them fluids, manage their ventilation, give them supportive care, and hope they make it. If they do make it, a lot of them have many of secondary issues. In workers’ comp, that can lead to a lot of claims and a lot of costs.”

Research on that drug first proposed it for treating COPD, but concluded that when inhaled by mice with induced lung injury, it not only stopped the injury, it reversed it, even when treatment is initiated well into the disease process.

“So, here’s a drug that was about to be shelved. And now this drug has the potential to change the course of history,” Dr. Bhatia said. “That’s the fun part, because when you work with the scientists, they may not see these things since they don’t see the clinical side of it, but working together you can come up with solutions to real problems in medicine.”

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