{"entity":{"id":"idea-bio1-undruggable-market-commitment","kind":"idea","name":"A guaranteed purchase prize for the first drug against a named hard target","aka":[],"tldr":"Governments promised in advance to buy vaccines that did not yet exist, and they got made. The same promise could be made for a drug against a target everyone has given up on.","summary":"Advance market commitments worked for pneumococcal vaccines and shaped COVID-19 vaccine supply. Applied to undruggable oncology targets, a public or philanthropic funder would commit to purchase a defined volume at a defined price for the first agent meeting a pre-specified efficacy bar against a designated target such as KRAS G12D in pancreatic cancer or gain-of-function mutant p53, with access conditions attached.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (The undruggable drivers): Dang et al., Drugging the 'undruggable' cancer targets (Nature Reviews Cancer 2017)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc.2017.36"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["pancreatic"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":["kras","tp53"],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-undruggable-targets","b-incentive-misalignment","b-funding-allocation"],"keyPapers":["paper-dang-nat-rev-cancer"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"A committed purchase guarantee of sufficient size measurably increases the number of active industrial programmes against the designated target within three years of announcement.","rationale":"Investment in high-risk targets is limited by uncertain revenue rather than by scientific interest; demand-side instruments change that calculation without picking a technical approach.","test":"Announce one pilot commitment with a clear technical specification and independent adjudication, and count programme starts, patent filings and consortium formation against matched control targets over three years.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"policy","cost":"large","horizonYears":8},"route":"/ideas/idea-bio1-undruggable-market-commitment/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"pancreatic","kind":"cancer","name":"Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma","route":"/cancers/pancreatic/"}],"target":[{"id":"kras","kind":"target","name":"KRAS","route":"/targets/kras/"},{"id":"tp53","kind":"target","name":"TP53","route":"/targets/tp53/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-funding-allocation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Funding follows fashion, not burden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/"},{"id":"b-incentive-misalignment","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains","route":"/bottlenecks/b-incentive-misalignment/"},{"id":"b-undruggable-targets","kind":"bottleneck","name":"The undruggable drivers","route":"/bottlenecks/b-undruggable-targets/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-dang-nat-rev-cancer","kind":"paper","name":"Drugging the 'undruggable' cancer targets","route":"/key-papers/paper-dang-nat-rev-cancer/"}],"roadmap":[{"id":"drug-discovery-roadmap","kind":"roadmap","name":"Drug discovery roadmap: screening in mice → maps of dependency → designing in silico","route":"/roadmaps/drug-discovery-roadmap/"}]}}