Joe Lonsdale’s FDA reform agenda

Joe Lonsdale’s recent Substack post, “What America Needs from a New FDA Commissioner,” is notable as much for who’s saying it as for what it says. Lonsdale is a Palantir cofounder turned venture capitalist who is closely connected with the Trump administration and tech right. That means his comments on regulatory policy have a decent shot at being heard by people who can act on them. The good news is that Lonsdale is pushing a lot of promising ideas to remove unnecessary red tape holding back clinical trials. That includes investigating and approving new “surrogate endpoints” that drug studies can use as outcomes to measure; adopting an expedited Australian-style approach to Phase 1 trials; and trying to eliminate wasted time between trial phases. These are paired with a focus on beating China and encouraging companies to test in the US. That framing wasn’t enough to get much done on these topics under former Commissioner Marty Makary, but maybe they will be under his successor.