Need some motivation?

I made some figures for those days when I need a refresher because the noise of the day has distracted me from the big picture.  I hope all y'all find them as motivating.

Here's a picture of how cancer is distributed around the globe

I was fairly amazed at that distribution until I looked into where the majority of money is spent to treat cancer:

A significant contribution to this situation is tied to the distribution of wealth on the planet.  

• Over 1 billion people live on less than $1/day
• Over 2.7 billion people live on less than $2/day

Along with those very sobering numbers is how the rest of the world is spending its money to take care of its citizens.

The impact of these numbers only begins to paint the picture of the challenges to be overcome.  For example, the distribution of public health:

The impact is a patient has to rely on themselves, or family members, when it comes to treating a problem.  

Looking at the dose cost of some anti-cancer drugs, these prices aren't accessible for the rest of the world even if there were medical personnel who were available to offer them:

To bring anti-cancer treatments to the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2/day, the cost of treatment has to be about $1/dose (my estimate, based upon UNICEF numbers for vaccines).  The implication is that the cost of making the drug has to be about $0.1/dose (again, my estimate).  As a process development engineer, that's the number I'm chasing.  As a result, I'll use scale,  cost of goods, and anything else I can find to get me as close as possible to that value because the closer I am to there, the greater the patient opportunity for the medication.

If you need a couple of outstanding references, check out this paper by Brian Kelley as well as Suzanne S. Farid.  These papers offer valuable insight into the economic forces at play in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.