We recently announced a Challenge to advance research in childhood obesity with the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research.  The Challenge is very personal to the Foundation, which is composed of parents of children with Prader-Willi Syndrome.  A solution to this Challenge will have a direct and immediate impact on thousands of children who are currently suffering from the effects of the disorder.  We talked to Shawn about the Challenge, his personal experience with Prader-Willi Syndrome and the overall benefit the Challenge solution will have on the field of obesity research.

Hi Shawn.  Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a relatively rare disorder that may be unfamiliar to many of our Solvers.  Can you tell us a bit about it? What are the biggest challenges faced by children with PWS and their families?

Prader-Willi syndrome is a genetic disorder that occurs in approximately one out of every 20,000 births. PWS affects males and females with equal frequency and affects all races and ethnicities. PWS is recognized as the most common genetic cause of life-threatening childhood obesity.  The syndrome is genetically characterized as an abnormality of chromosome 15.

Common characteristics of PWS include small hands and feet, abnormal growth and body composition (small stature, very low lean body mass and early onset childhood obesity), hypotonia (weak muscles) at birth, insatiable hunger, extreme obesity, intellectual disability and mental illness.

The symptoms of Prader-Willi syndrome are thought to be caused by dysfunction of a portion of the brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is a small endocrine organ at the base of the brain that plays a crucial role in many bodily functions, including hunger and satiety, temperature and pain regulation, sleep-wake balance, fluid balance, emotions, and fertility

The biggest challenge for kids with PWS is the extreme desire to eat.  This insatiable hunger greatly reduces their quality of life and impacts areas such as learning and social interaction.  We’ve all had times in our lives where we missed a meal; maybe you missed a lunch because you needed to make a deadline at work.  As the hunger continues and that feeling of starvation increases, all you can think about is getting your next meal.  It’s difficult to think of anything but food.  Image having that feeling of hunger all day and for the rest of your life, no matter how much you eat.  That is what our kids face.

The stress level for a family with a child who has PWS is very high.  A big part of the stress is the constant supervision required to keep our kids safe from food.  Because they have an inability to regulate their food intake, this task falls on the parents and others that care for them.  Parents often have to lock up their cabinets and refrigerators to manage food consumption.  Unfortunately there have been many cases where a child has died because of overeating and every parent is aware of this risk.  In our society food is a big part of our culture and trying to balance this while protecting our children from food is very difficult and stressful.

How has PWS affected you personally?

It was Friday, a couple of days before Mother’s Day when we got the diagnosis that Ellie (our first child) had PWS.  It was the hardest piece of information I have ever received.  I was completely confused and scared about what this diagnosis meant.  The physical and emotional pain I felt at that moment was like nothing I had ever felt before.  It’s hard to explain unless you have gone through it but when I heard the words Prader-Willi syndrome I knew our lives would never be the same.  She would never be able to have children, going to college was very unlikely and she would not be able to live an independent life.  Those life expectations that we take for granted were gone.  You don’t really realize how important they are to you until they are gone.  Life had changed.

Ellie and our family have been through a lot.  She has required physical and speech therapy almost from birth to today.  Things that come easily for her peers and her baby sister are difficult for her.  She is almost 5 years old and as she gets older I sense that she realizes things are more difficult for her.  She has OCD and autistic like behaviors.  Though she is thin (because of her strict diet and daily physical activity) she is increasingly interested in food.  She talks about it a lot and it’s getting worse.  Food is becoming the most important thing in her life.  Before it was baby dolls, now it’s pizza or birthday cakes.  Almost as soon as she finishes her dinner she is asking her Mommy what’s for dinner tomorrow or when is her next meal.  As a parent, hearing the words “I’m hungry” from Ellie hurts every time I hear it.  And I hear it constantly throughout the day.  Ellie can’t help it but it doesn’t lessen the pain because I know it’s that insatiable appetite that will prevent her from living an independent life.

What would a solution to this Challenge mean for children with PWS?

A solution to this Challenge would increase our understanding of hyperphagia and provide a potential treatment for our loved ones with PWS.  As a parent with a child with special needs, all I want is for my daughter to reach her full potential and to not be limited by PWS.  Finding a treatment to help eliminate or reduce the desire to eat would greatly improve her life and others with PWS.

What prompted you to post your Challenge on the InnoCentive Challenge platform?

At the Foundation for Prader-Will Research we are constantly looking for ways to accelerate research.  Most of the Board members have a child with PWS so we are very motivated to develop or find treatments for our kids as soon as possible.  We believe that the InnoCentive Challenge platform is one way to help accelerate research.

Childhood obesity is a critical problem in general – how might a solution to this problem benefit the larger field of research into this issue?

There was an article I read that interviewed Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the NIH.  He was asked why we should focus on rare diseases when they affect so few people.  I will always remember his answer.  He said, “If you or your family were affected, it wouldn’t be rare for you. And the study of rare diseases has taught us more than most people realize. Furthermore, the opportunities to capitalize on what we have learned so far have never been greater. If you care at all about biology and about understanding medicine, rare diseases are critical.”

I strongly believe in this message. I think one of the reasons you can learn so much from studying rare diseases is that often these rare diseases have extreme characteristics or symptoms that also apply to the general population.  I’m an engineer by training and the easiest way to understand a problem is too look at the extreme version of that problem. It often allows you to more easily see the true cause of the problem.  A milder form of the problem increases the likelihood of missing or overloading the cause because the signals are not as strong.

People with PWS have the extreme characteristics that lead to obesity.  They have very slow metabolism and insatiable appetite.  Left unchecked, a person with PWS will become obese.  By looking more closely at PWS and determining the underlining mechanisms of hyperphagia, this understanding could be applied to the general population.

The Foundation for Prader-Willi Research has been very active in raising research funds for PWS.  Can you tell us about some of those efforts?

The Foundation for Prader-Willi Research was established in 2003 by a small group of parents who saw the need to foster research that would help their children with Prader-Willi syndrome lead more healthy and fulfilling lives.  Today, FPWR is composed of hundreds of parents, family members, researchers, and others who are interested in addressing the many issues related to PWS, including childhood obesity, developmental delays, psychiatric disorders and autism spectrum disorders.

The mission of FPWR is to eliminate the challenges of Prader-Willi syndrome through the advancement of research.  High quality research will lead to more effective treatments and an eventual cure for this disorder

To date, the FPWR has committed more than $2,000,000 to support PWS-related research.  Research funded by FPWR has been published in top medical journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Endocrinology, and BMC Genomics.

Is there anything you’d like our Solvers to know about your Challenge?

We are so excited to launch this Challenge with InnoCentive.  If this Challenge is solved it will directly impact the lives of people with PWS.  A greater understanding of hyperphagia in PWS is critical to developing or finding treatments that our loved ones so need and deserve.  It’s our hope that this Challenge will lead to treatments.  There is also a real possibility that any insight or treatments we learn from this Challenge can apply to the general obesity epidemic, which is one of our society’s biggest health crisis.

We recently announced a Challenge with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) to improve sanitary conditions for more than a billion people in the world using pit latrines.  We asked the Director of Sanitation Ventures, run by LSHTM, to provide a bit of background on the problem at the heart of this Challenge.

Hi Walter.  Can you tell us a bit about Sanitation Ventures and how you’re connected to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine?

Good sanitation is one of the greatest advances in public health, yet it remains unavailable to billions of poor people in developing countries. Around 1.7 billion people worldwide still use one of the most basic forms of on-site (non-piped) sanitation, the pit latrine. And they face a recurring problem: the contents don’t decompose fast enough or fully, and the pits fill up. This seriously undermines people’s health and quality of life.

Sanitation Ventures is a three-year project to tackle these problems, run by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I was involved in developing the proposal with LSHTM and the UK development agency Oxfam. We’re a diverse team of business professionals, scientists, academic researchers and innovation specialists, who want a world where safe, sustainable sanitation is accessible to everyone.

Our approach is based on two core beliefs:

• Many recent scientific advances, particularly in biotechnology, can be readily applied to improving sanitation in sustainable, affordable ways
• Market-led approaches are the best way to provide novel, sustainable interventions to address key development challenges.

Building on the latest advances in science and technology, we’re generating new knowledge about pit latrines and developing innovations in on-site sanitation that will offer longer-lasting, affordable sanitation for low-income users. The BSF larvae approach is just one of several we’re exploring. We’ll then help make sure these solutions are successfully brought to market, where they can have sustainable impact on users’ lives.

Your Challenge is essentially seeking a way to keep pit latrines from overfilling, using black soldier fly (BSF) larvae.  How did this idea of using BSF come about and has it been proven to work elsewhere?

As part of the project we conducted a landscaping study to see what technology was available which could extend the lifetime of latrines by enhancing decomposition of their contents. An entomology research student at LSHTM heard about this and passed on a paper which described the ability of BSF larvae to degrade manure. We got talking and did more research into what else had been done and discovered that the ability of BSF larvae to degrade organic waste was quite well established, but no-one had shown this on human faecal waste. That was the point at which our own lab work started and our interest really took off.

What will you do to advance the solution you choose to award?  What needs to happen next in the process of solving this bigger problem?

We will review the winning solutions with our internal team and discuss how they can be taken forward to a proof of concept stage. This will allow us to map out a work programme to evaluate the solution more fully. Depending on the timing and complexity, we may need to seek additional funding to progress the idea as part of the next phase of Sanitation Ventures.

Inherent in your Challenge is the idea that there should be an economic opportunity for communities to resell the BSF larvae after they’ve done their job.  How does this work and who might benefit?

BSF larvae have high potential value. Harvested at their prepupae stage, they can readily and efficiently be processed to produce high-protein animal feed and oil/ biodiesel and soil conditioner. Demand is rising for all of these in developing countries. So there are multiple revenue streams possible. We think these will benefit not just the entrepreneurs running such businesses but also the latrine user, who may receive a small fee for the use of their latrine. We haven’t fully explored all the possible models – a business could be run on a community basis, or on a service provision basis, or on an individual household basis.

This topic is one that may make some people a bit squeamish.  How do you help people get past this initial reaction so that they are motivated to work on the problem?

We understand that – it’s a perfectly natural reaction! The motivation comes from knowing that we can make a real difference to people’s daily lives by making their sanitation more dignified. We’ve visited many communities in the course of our research where people suffer on a daily basis from living with pit latrines that need emptying. Often this means stark financial choices. In Tanzania, Amina, a mother with minimal income, told us the cost of emptying her latrine was the same as two years’ school fees for one of her children. Seventeen people use her latrine, which is full – but she can’t afford to have it emptied.

Ultimately, this is a problem about people’s quality of life – whether parents are healthy enough to work and earn an income for their families, and children are well enough to go to school and learn, so they can have a decent future. It’s incredibly unpleasant for people to have to live with inadequate sanitation in their homes, and causes real worry, embarrassment and expense.

If you live with good sanitation, it’s easy to take for granted. You don’t really give it a second thought, because it removes waste so effectively. But imagine trying to keep your home clean and your family healthy without it. So the Challenge is really about improving poor people’s health and livelihoods across the world – in a sustainable and environmentally safe way. This will reduce their exposure to disease and free up income that can be used to support their families.

Will the solution to this Challenge be applicable to other issues in the developing world?

There’s a real shortage of protein for animal feed at the moment so potentially this approach could really help in that respect.

Is there anything else you’d like our Solvers to know about the Challenge or about your organization?

Alongside the Challenge, we’re researching the exact yield of BSF larvae from latrine waste. You can find out more in the Innovation section of our website, www.sanitationventures.com.

The site also has details of other on-site sanitation concepts we’re exploring (including Tiger worms and enzymes), as well as our scientific research and how to contact us. We’re very open to any ideas people have on those too, so please get in touch with your comments.

Our success depends on bringing together people and ideas from many different backgrounds, so we’re especially grateful to InnoCentive and the Solver Community for making this Challenge possible.

Fantastic – thank you so much for talking with us – good luck with your Challenge!

Thanks.

We recently posted a Challenge with the Consumer Electronics Association and the Environmental Defense Fund as part of our EDF/InnoCentive EcoChallenge Series.  The Challenge seeks financially viable, environmentally-beneficial business models based on the repurposing of recycled Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) glass from used televisions and computer monitors.  We spoke with Walter Alcorn, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association about the Challenge and the importance of solving this critical environmental issue.

Hi Walter – thanks for agreeing to talk with our Solvers today.  Your Challenge, New Uses for Recycled Glass, specifically calls for new uses for CRT screens, once the standard for televisions and other types of monitors.  How big a problem is used CRT glass for the environment?

The disposition of used CRT glass is a serious resource conservation and recovery issue.  Although used CRT glass is inert while still intact as old TV and monitor tubes, CRT glass contains a significant amount of lead that could be released into the environment if processed inappropriately or mismanaged.

Safe recycling is a big deal for my industry – the consumer electronics industry. Last April we announced the eCycling Leadership Initiative with an ambitious Billion Pound Challenge to more than triple the amount of electronics recycled annually by our industry from 300 million pounds in 2010 to one billion in 2016.

These billions of pounds of recycled electronics need to be recycled responsibly and the materials put back into productive use.  By weight, more than half of all collected consumer electronics are old televisions and computer monitors, and the heaviest component of most of those products are CRTs. For decades, CRT was the technology of choice in the display industry but during the past decade, demand for CRTs has dropped drastically as newer flat-panel technologies like LCD and plasma have become affordable and widely available. Until now most CRT glass collected for recycling was cleaned up and recycled into new CRT units, but the market for new CRT displays is now nearly gone.  Uses for CRT glass with lead (e.g., funnel glass) is particularly challenging.

Why did you choose to pose this Challenge to the InnoCentive Solver Network?

We needed raise the visibility of this situation beyond the recycling industry.  New applications for CRT glass, and potentially new processing technologies are needed to appropriately recycle this material.  We are excited about the encouraging response from the Solver community with more than 250 project rooms opened in the first 2 weeks.   Hopefully this is a sign that economically and environmentally viable uses for CRT glass truly exist.

What will you do with the solution once it has been selected? Are you hoping to take it forward and would you consider working with the Solver to further develop the solution?

We are a trade association so our capability for direct participation in the solution is limited, but our plan is to make the winning solution(s) public and raise the awareness of both the problem and identified solution(s) to help create market demand for used CRT glass.

Are there other problems that might benefit from the solution to this Challenge?

New uses for CRT glass will reduce the demand for use of virgin materials and extractive activities such as lead mining, thereby providing an additional resource and environmental benefits.  There might also be solutions that could be applied to other materials recovered from consumer electronics, or more likely relevant to other materials recovered from products in other industries.   We’ll just have to see!

Once you have a solution to this Challenge, what’s the next issue you’ll be tackling?

Given the pace of technological change in the consumer electronics industry we will continue to keep an eye on markets for recycling old electronics.  The CRT challenge stands above all others at this point.

What would you like to tell Solvers who are thinking about participating in this Challenge?

We are looking for creative solutions that work both economically and environmentally.  There are at least 2 billion pounds of old CRTs still in use or ready for recycling in the U.S. alone, and globally several times that amount.  Thank you for helping us find good uses for  all that old CRT glass!

Sounds great – thanks Walter, and good luck with your Challenge!

We recently announced the launch of an exciting new Challenge series with BeyondPolio, an initiative of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation and the investment firm Spencer Trask to help support the global eradication of polio. Though rare in the Western world today, wild polioviruses are still circulating in a few remaining countries in Asia and Africa, where more than 1,000 new cases of paralytic polio are diagnosed each year.  The initial Challenge in the series Increasing the Affordability of Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine in Low- and Middle-income Countries, seeks novel ideas to significantly reduce the cost of using IPV in countries where it is currently unaffordable.  The solution to this Challenge will form the basis for a series of larger Challenges, aimed at helping to eradicate polio completely and maintain success once eradication is achieved.  We asked Dr. Peter Salk, President of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation, to give us some background about the state of polio eradication and this Challenge series.

Hi Peter, and thank you for speaking with us today.  Your Challenge aims to help close the final chapter on eradicating polio.  People may be surprised to learn that polio is still a problem in some parts of the world.  Can you tell us why it has been so difficult to rid the world of this disease?

Let me give you some background so that an answer to this question will make sense.

Polio has been around for a long time (an Egyptian stele from around 1400 BC shows a man with the typical signs of a leg paralyzed by polio).  The disease became a huge problem in the early part of the last century when improvements in sanitation meant that children were not exposed to polioviruses while still protected by antibodies from their mothers.  As a result, large scale epidemics took place, the worst of which in the U.S. occurred in 1952 when nearly 58,000 individuals — mostly children — were paralyzed or died.

With the development of the inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), which entered use in 1955, and then the live attenuated oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), which was initially deployed between 1959-1963, it became possible to envision eradicating polio completely.  This goal is feasible since humans are the only natural hosts for polioviruses — unlike influenza, for example, which is carried by many other animal species.

A Global Polio Eradication Initiative, spearheaded by Rotary International, WHO, the CDC and UNICEF, was undertaken beginning in 1988, relying primarily on the use of OPV, which is inexpensive and easy to administer.  Since the start of that campaign, the number of cases of paralytic polio caused by wild polioviruses has fallen from approximately 350,000 cases per year around the world to fewer than 2,000 cases a year over the last decade.  That’s a decrease of over 99%.

Why did you decide to post your Challenge to the InnoCentive Solver network?

The BeyondPolio program is the brainchild of Kevin Kimberlin, Chairman of Spencer Trask & Co., the investment firm that is helping carry out the BeyondPolio initiative in conjunction with the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation.  Kevin had played a major role in the HIV vaccine project my father had devoted himself to in the last years of his life, and he and my father had a close and meaningful relationship.  The idea for using InnoCentive as part of the BeyondPolio initiative derived from Spencer Trask’s familiarity with InnoCentive as a result of having helped with its initial financing, and from Spencer Trask’s awareness of the track record of effectiveness of InnoCentive’s Challenge Driven Innovation programs.  The InnoCentive platform appeared to be a good way to get the word out to a large number of creative and intelligent “Solvers”, and it seemed well-suited for BeyondPolio’s series of Challenges.

OK, so if the eradication program reduced the number of cases of polio in the world caused by wild polioviruses by 99%, that means there still is another 1% of the way to go.  Why has it been so hard to get the job finished over the last 10 years?

There are several problems.  Here’s the first.  Despite enormous efforts and dedication of resources, in several countries it has been very difficult reaching all of the children that need to be immunized in order to produce an adequate level of immunity in the population to suppress the transmission of wild polioviruses from one person to another.  In Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, two of the four countries left in the world in which transmission of wild polioviruses has never been interrupted, local conditions have made it hard to reach children in areas where there is conflict or discord.  In Nigeria several years ago, rumors spread that the polio immunization program was a Western plot to harm Muslim children, and many parents refused to allow their children to be immunized.  As a result, not only did polioviruses continue to circulate within Nigeria, but they also spread to many of the neighboring countries in Africa where wild polioviruses had previously been eliminated.  A lot of attention has been focused on restoring confidence in the program, gathering local support, and improving the effectiveness of the field teams that administer the vaccine.

And what are some of the other problems?

One of the problems that we want to address with the BeyondPolio initiative has to do with an unintended side effect of using OPV.  OPV contains live polioviruses that have been “tamed”.  The vaccine viruses have been weakened by genetic mutations that allow them to cause a poliovirus infection in the intestinal tract — but not to infect the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that wild polioviruses can infect and kill, resulting in paralysis.  However, sometimes these weakened vaccine viruses can revert to virulence.  In other words, mutations can occur in the viruses when they grow in a person’s intestinal tract that restore the viruses’ ability to infect nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.  As a result, on rare occasions individuals who receive OPV can develop paralytic polio.  This can also occur in close contacts of immunized individuals who become exposed to the revertant viruses — for example, mothers who change infants’ diapers.  The WHO estimates that this sort of “vaccine associated paralytic polio” occurs in around 2-4 individuals for every million children born in countries routinely using OPV.  All told, WHO estimates that there are around 250-500 cases of “VAPP” in the world each year.

That seems like a lot of cases, given that there are now fewer than 2,000 cases of polio a year caused by “wild” polioviruses.

I agree.  When you also consider cases of polio caused by vaccine-derived viruses that have, in addition, regained the ability to spread from person to person and cause outbreaks of their own, you end up with a figure of around a quarter of all cases of polio in the world over the last decade being caused by viruses originating in OPV.  It has to be remembered that this high percentage of vaccine-related polio goes along with the overall success of the eradication program to date.  Nevertheless, it would seem to me desirable to avoid these cases of vaccine-related polio — which total somewhere around 3,500-6,500 cases since the year 2000 — if at all possible.

What will happen, then, if the global polio eradication program finally succeeds in getting rid of the last wild polioviruses?

There’s been a lot of talk about that.  Once wild polioviruses are gone, there will still be viruses around that originated in OPV, and if OPV continues to be used, then it will just introduce more vaccine viruses that could spread and cause polio.  The idea now is that once eradication of wild polioviruses has been officially certified — three years after the last case of polio caused by wild poliovirus has been observed — routine use of OPV will be stopped everywhere.

But then what will happen with the remaining viruses from OPV?

That’s a good question, and exactly the one that we are concerned with in the BeyondPolio initiative.  With luck, even if nothing else is done, the last remaining OPV-derived viruses would just die out without causing any problems.  However, mathematical studies suggest there is a high probability that the vaccine-derived viruses will end up causing polio outbreaks if there are not high enough residual levels of immunity in countries where these viruses are circulating.  The best way to avoid this outcome, in my mind, is to make IPV available as a substitute so that immunity levels will remain high and OPV-associated polio outbreaks can be avoided.

Are there plans for this to be done?

The major problem is that IPV is more expensive than OPV, and low- and middle-income countries do not have the resources to purchase and utilize this alternative vaccine.  Many of the wealthier countries in the world have already switched from OPV to IPV in order to eliminate the risk of OPV-related polio.  The costs of using IPV will need to come down if it is to be widely available to the less affluent countries.

And BeyondPolio is hoping to do something about that?

Yes, and we’re not alone.  The World Health Assembly in 2008 passed a resolution requesting the Director-General of WHO to develop affordable strategies for the use of IPV in the final stages of the polio eradication program.  Both the Polio Research Committee of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been supporting research aimed at making IPV more affordable.

With these important organizations supporting research of this type, what do you hope to add that might be of help?

There are a lot of people in the world with experience in areas either directly associated with immunity and vaccines or in related — or perhaps even seemingly unrelated — fields who might have some novel approaches to suggest.  We won’t know until we ask whether some of these ideas could turn out to be of real value.

And you’ve begun to ask?

That’s what this first Challenge is all about.  We are asking people who are interested in helping to solve problems to take a look at what is currently being done in an attempt to reduce costs associated with IPV use and to offer ideas of their own as to whether there might be some opportunity areas for further reducing costs that have not yet been adequately explored.

So you’re not asking for specific technological suggestions at this time?

That will come next.  First we want to see if there are any new areas of focus suggested that could conceivably be taken advantage of towards lowering final vaccination costs.  We will then follow up on any such focus areas with additional Challenges asking for specific technological “solutions” aimed at effecting significant cost savings.

Might there be any spin-offs resulting from this Challenge program for diseases other than polio?

Absolutely.  The kinds of questions we expect to be addressing could have implications for delivery of other injected vaccines.  In a world confronted with many health problems, savings of any sort would result in resources being freed up to deal with other important issues.

Are there any other kinds of Challenges you have in mind related to the polio eradication effort?

We are planning to begin a second Challenge series early next year to address the question as to whether IPV might be deployed more quickly than now seems possible, even given existing price structures.  It turns out that the need to supplement OPV may happen sooner than had been anticipated.  The current goal of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is to rid the world of wild polioviruses by the end of 2012.  That is an ambitious goal, and it may not be possible to accomplish this difficult task that soon.  If the goal were indeed to be reached that quickly, then IPV would need to be phased in by 2015 (when the eradication of wild polioviruses would be certified) in order to replace OPV and maintain population immunity.  I had not mentioned this before, but there are three types of poliovirus — types 1, 2 and 3.  Both IPV and OPV have included polioviruses of all three types to insure that immunity is induced against all possible polioviruses encountered in the wild.  However, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been so successful that no type 2 wild polioviruses have been found circulating since 1999.  Since it turns out that most of the polio associated with the use of OPV is caused by the type 2 vaccine virus, there has been a call to consider whether the weakened type 2 virus should be removed from OPV altogether — as it has been in a number of areas already.  If this course of action is recommended and followed, then a more rapid introduction of IPV would be helpful in order to maintain immunity to type 2 polioviruses at least during the interim period following type 2 OPV cessation, when revertant type 2 vaccine viruses may still be circulating with the ability to cause polio outbreaks.

How would your second Challenge series be helpful?

I would like to ask for suggestions from people with knowledge of vaccination programs in particular low- and middle-income countries about the design of roadmaps for introduction of IPV in these countries that could be undertaken sooner rather than later.  Again, we would not be alone in asking these questions and seeking solutions for a more rapid introduction of IPV in these countries, but I am hoping that we might come across some new ideas that could help in the overall project.

Is there any chance that BeyondPolio’s efforts might be of help in other ways even before wild polioviruses are eliminated from the world?

That depends, of course, on how quickly any practical ideas that come from our Challenges can be implemented, and on how quickly the wild poliovirus elimination phase of the eradication program is accomplished.  There are some parts of the world where OPV doesn’t work as well as elsewhere — perhaps because of the circulation of other kinds of viruses that interfere with the growth of attenuated (weakened) OPV viruses in the intestinal tract.  In such areas, some children may receive multiple doses of OPV without developing adequate levels of immunity.  IPV is not likely to have that problem.  Also, there have been several studies suggesting that using both OPV and IPV together in some areas may be more effective than using either of the vaccines alone.  Thus, depending on timing, IPV might have a role to play in the eradication program even before the OPV cessation phase.

Will BeyondPolio end up profiting from any innovations that come from its Challenges?

BeyondPolio is a designated program of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation, which is a charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.  Any practical outcomes of Challenges sponsored by BeyondPolio are intended for the benefit of humanity and will be made publically available.

I see from its website that the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation was organized to preserve and extend work begun by your father. Can you explain the role of this new initiative, BeyondPolio, in relation to the Foundation?

My father began his career studying vaccines — in particular, he wanted to see if it was possible to develop inactivated vaccines against virus diseases, since he had been told in medical school that it was not possible to do so.  After working on a successful inactivated virus vaccine against influenza with his mentor, Thomas Francis, Jr., at the University of Michigan at the end of World War II, he went on to Pittsburgh to start his own laboratory in 1947.  He was very soon recruited by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (subsequently known as the March of Dimes) to work on polio, and he and his research team came up with an inactivated vaccine to protect against that disease that was found to be safe and effective in 1955.  He then went on to found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, in 1960, which not only is an architectural masterpiece (designed by the great American architect, Louis Kahn), but is one of the top-ranking biological research institutes in the world today.  He continued his own immunological research on cancer, autoimmune disease (in particular, multiple sclerosis) and vaccines, including collaborative work to increase the potency of the inactivated poliovirus vaccine and a project to develop an inactivated vaccine against HIV/AIDS.  He also thought, wrote and lectured extensively about the human condition — humanity’s place in the scheme of things and what internal and external changes we need to undertake in face of the challenges and opportunities confronting us today.  The Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation is dedicated to preserving the history of this broad career and making it accessible for scholarly and educational purposes, to finishing “unfinished scientific business”, and to extending my father’s ideas and desires for humanity in ways that he might not have been able to accomplish during his own lifetime.  BeyondPolio might be considered to fall within the “unfinished business” category.  Helping to complete the eradication of polio, in whatever ways the Foundation and its BeyondPolio program might contribute, would be a gift not only to his memory, but to the many thousands of people who have committed their own professional careers and volunteer efforts to this cause.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Just my appreciation for your interest and questions, and the hopes that something good will come of these efforts.  And also my own request that anyone with some background relevant to the issues we are concerned with in these Challenges should consider becoming a Solver and contributing your own ideas that might help facilitate the successful completion of the polio eradication campaign.

Thanks Peter – and good luck with your Challenge.

Thank you.

Institutional corruption is on the rise.  Illegal corruption is relatively simple to identify and combat – dumping of chemicals into water supplies, bribes offered and accepted, election fraud.  However, a different type of abuse has been getting increasing attention in the media, which often involves acts that are technically considered legal, but can be just as damaging, to employees, constituents and the organization’s reputation. Recently the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, an organization founded by professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig to study institutional corruption, turned to the InnoCentive Solver community to help develop systems that expose corrupting forces within public and private institutions. We talked to Neeru Paharia, Director of Research for the center, about this particular Challenge.

Hi Neeru – thank you for talking with us today.  Your Challenge focuses on ideas for a system to monitor institutional corruption.   What would an ideal solution look like?

We hope a solution would outline how to collect and present relevant information about an institution to constituencies in a meaningful way so that 1. they can make better personal decisions, and 2. the institution now has an additional incentive to serve its constituents.

What would you consider to be the biggest hurdle to monitoring corruption?

Watchdog groups, the media, auditors, and regulators have all been deployed to monitor corruption. However all these groups are also vulnerable to capture. For example, in most cases financial auditors are employed by those whom they are auditing. What is their incentive to find fraud when their future business is also at risk? Thus, we are excited about the possibility of data transparency, analysis, crowd sourcing, etc. to take on a monitoring role. With technology and the internet, this is an emerging area and there are some promising projects already underway. Organizations like maplight.org, guidestar,org, and even yelp.com in the case of business are collecting and exposing data in a meaningful way that is of use to constituents.

Is there a profession or industry that you think is in most dire need of this solution?

I think people have differing opinions on this. Campaign finance is certainly one that if reformed, may have beneficial trickle down effects into other institutions and industries.

Can you give us an example of a form of “legal” corruption?

Imagine there is a regulator, and the organization she regulates suggests that they might consider her for a future job with a pay rate that is at least double of what she currently earns. Do you think the regulator will be more or less lenient with the company?

In what ways do you think you’ll be able to apply the winning solution?

We still do not really know what to expect so make no firm assertions about what we will do. However, if we receive a solution that we think is especially viable we may attempt to deploy it.

Would you say that the majority of the organizations that you would target with these new tools will be motivated to implement them?   Or is the benefit purely to the organizations’ stakeholders?

If the solution is something an organization has to implement, their incentive is to improve trust and legitimacy with their stakeholders. If the solution can be deployed by an outside party then it does not matter.

What are your thoughts on current methods of drawing attention to corporate corruption (Occupy Wall Street, etc.?)  Do you think they are effective in shining a light on this problem, or do they stand in the way of true solutions?

The protesters on Wall Street are advocating for many different things. What is most resonant to us is that we have a bigger systemic problem. In the case of the financial crisis, these problems have led to a system failure with very little accountability. We hope attention to these systemic problems continue to be a point of discussion in the public debate.

Very interesting.  Thanks for talking with us today and good luck with your Challenge.

Thank you.