# A public-benefit phase 1 factory that takes academic discoveries into first-in-human trials

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-moon-public-phase1-factory/  
OnCo record `idea-moon-public-phase1-factory` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Promising academic cancer discoveries stall because nobody funds the expensive step from lab to first human trial. Build a shared public facility that does exactly that step, repeatedly.

## Summary

The translational valley of death lies between validated preclinical results and a funded first-in-human study: manufacturing to clinical grade, toxicology, regulatory filing and early trial costs are beyond most academic groups and unattractive to investors before human data. NCI's NExT programme and some European infrastructures partially address this. The proposal is a purpose-built, publicly funded translation facility with in-house GMP manufacturing for biologics, cell products and small molecules, standing toxicology and regulatory teams, and a clinical unit, selecting projects competitively and retaining a public share of downstream value.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: The facility moves at least ten academic assets a year into phase 1 at half the cost and time of ad hoc translation and returns value to fund itself within a decade.
- Rationale: Translation is a repeatable industrial process wasted when rebuilt for each project; shared infrastructure captures the economies of scale that individual academic groups cannot.
- Proposed test: Fund one facility for five years; measure assets translated, time from selection to first patient, cost per asset, and downstream licensing or trials versus historical academic comparators.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: policy

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (The valley of death between lab and product): Butler, Translational research: crossing the valley of death (Nature 2008): https://doi.org/10.1038/453840a

## Connected records

- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/), [The Francis Crick Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/francis-crick/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)
- key papers: [Translational research: crossing the valley of death](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-butler-nature/)

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