”Why not marry NIH’s talents and assets to the private sector assets and then invite people who have good ideas to come in so you can move the process.”

”It’s critical to create HARPA, because we have got to take advantage of all that has been accomplished to date and turn them into something tangible, such as a cure, or a treatment, and we have to do it as fast as possible.”

”Somebody’s got to de-risk it so that these big companies, A, have a high probability that it’ll work, and B, it’s not going to take ten years to find out. That’s what HARPA ought to be doing.”

“90% of what Pharma takes out into that long pathway to bedside fails. And so all the capital that they put into clinical trials, into applied research, is a down the drain. So this whole pathway from bench to bedside is not being treated carefully.”

“I see HARPA helping us coordinate an effort amongst multiple people, institutions, and industry groups to come up with a plan, and to run it effectively together.”

“If HARPA existed today, I would instantly develop the technology to understand the prescribing practices of every doctor in this country who prescribes opioids, and be able to report on that on a quarterly basis with only a 30 day lag, so we can immediately spot which prescribers in this country are prescribing outside of CDC guidelines.”

“Only an entity like HARPA could bring together the biomedical and the engineer communities to fully exploit revolutions like the one currently occurring in nanotechnology.”

“HARPA wants to be time-limited. Wants answers soon. Not in the future. Soon. Smaller companies might be more nimble and able to streamline things better.”

“We’ve got 9,000 human diseases.  We have interventions for maybe 500 of these diseases. And the overwhelming majority of the other ones there are zero people working on treatments for them… Until we start to go directly at that problem we’re not going to get there.” 

“What really excites me about HARPA is it’s a really innovative approach that looks at today’s reality and tomorrow’s promise.”