Medicine may be rooted in science, but it has never been wholly driven by it. The human body and mind are so complex that progress in medicine depends more and more on technology finding better ways of peering into the unknown. Leonardo da Vinci’s closely observed drawings gave doctors a better understanding of human anatomy. The discovery of X-rays made it possible to see the structure of the DNA molecule. More recently, progress has come from advances in artificial intelligence and a growing appreciation of the value of human history and diversity, among other things.
If science doesn’t fully describe the practice of medicine, neither does technology completely explain its progress. Medicine is ultimately a practice of compassion, of caring for people. Recently, experts have come to believe that medical research and practice must strive to reflect the full diversity of the human species. This is not a platitude meant to signal virtue; it is essential to the task at hand. A diversity of researchers helps ensure that the medical issues that most people confront in their daily lives get attention. And in this age of AI, where data is king, including the full panoply of human biological diversity in the collection of that data helps those people who medicine has historically neglected—and, ultimately, everyone.
In this issue of Newsweek, we have chosen 10 visionaries who have carried this spirit of medical inquiry into the current age. This is the second group in a Newsweek series this year focusing on Great Disruptors—what we call innovative agents of change who are using technology in new and creative ways that could potentially improve our lives. This project has been months in the making. We have solicited nominations from more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. In addition, the Newsweek staff combed the work of universities, tech incubators, venture capital firms, futurists and other tech experts and organizations to identify worthy candidates.
All of these Great Disruptors are using technology in a way that is either already driving fundamental, transformative change in their field—typically, with measurable, real-world results—or has clear and demonstrable potential to do so. The projects and areas of expertise among the honorees who made the final cut are diverse. All are motivated by a genuine desire to do good—to help solve a problem of global proportions on their own smaller scale or to improve the lives of people and communities in need. They are passionate about their mission.
We find these extraordinary people inspiring. We hope you do, too.
If you are suffering—if you live with depression, anxiety, addiction or other mental health issues—there really is hope. Psychiatry has many effective tools, from medication and talk therapy to a range of behavioral treatments that have helped millions of people. Doctors wish they had more tools. The last major new class of drugs—antidepressants like Prozac, Lexapro and Zoloft—came in the 1980s.
But maybe there are other answers—much older ones, discovered by Indigenous people of what is now the Southwest, Mexico and parts of South America. Five thousand years ago, according to archeological evidence, some of them began to use psychedelics—compounds like mescaline, found in many types of cactus, and psilocybin, from certain mushrooms. Dr. Jeeshan Chowdhury is working to give these old remedies new attention.
Chowdhury is founder and CEO of Journey Colab, a San Francisco-based startup that hopes to market a synthetic form of mescaline. He says that if used in combination with mainstream psychotherapy, it could be a useful tool against addiction and, perhaps, other disorders. If its manufacture and use are approved, the fact that it’s made in a lab means that plants in the wild need not be disturbed. And, importantly, Journey Colab has set up a trust to share ownership with the Indigenous people whose ancestors discovered the original compounds so long ago.
“These cultures are the only ones in the world that have successfully mastered at scale these very powerful technologies,” Chowdhury says.
Much of mainstream medicine is skeptical of “magic mushrooms” and the like; the counterculture movement of the 1960s (“Turn on, tune in, drop out”) backfired in many ways, leading to the war on drugs in the 1970s and after. Even the strongest advocates warn that if used carelessly, some psychedelics can do serious harm. People with family histories of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or cardiac problems should be especially careful. Chowdhury says mescaline needs to be used with safeguards, much as surgery is.
But there has also been promising research. For instance, researchers from Imperial College London used magnetic imaging to show that key networks in the brain “became more functionally interconnected and flexible after psilocybin treatment,” they wrote in the journal Nature Medicine in 2022. A common antidepressant did not have the same effect. If psychedelics help the formation of new connections among brain cells, scientists say it may explain why some patients say they find new clarity, and better ways to handle their problems, in talk therapy afterward. It’s not a drug trip that helps a person; it’s an enhanced ability to find solutions in psychotherapy in the days that follow.
Chowdhury refers to Journey Colab as “Journey” when he talks. He says he’s been on a journey of his own and an unlikely person to go exploring drugs that are illegal in the United States and many other countries. “I’m from a very traditional Muslim family,” he says, “where even today, we don’t have alcohol in our home.”
Canadian-born, a doctor-turned-entrepreneur who started and sold a health care management firm, Chowdhury says life was going great—on the outside. “But on the inside,” he says, “it always felt like I was drowning in my mental health.” He suffered from an anxiety disorder, rooted in part in his family’s struggles escaping war in Bangladesh, and prescription medications weren’t enough. “It’s not like they didn’t work, but it was as if somebody threw me a life preserver and while I could keep my head above water, I never really got free.”
Then he went to a therapist who gave him a small dose of a psychedelic—and in talk sessions afterward, the waters cleared. “What psychedelic medicine allowed for me was not only to know my own story, but to own my own story rather than being controlled by it.”
A movement has grown, partly because of advocates like him, partly because of new science, partly because of increases in anxiety and depression that were worsened by the COVID-19 crisis. Oregon and Colorado have legalized psilocybin for adult use; esketamine, a newer compound, has FDA approval for controlled treatment of some people with depression.
Could psychedelic drugs, with careful controls, became a new tool to protect mental health? It’s a complicated question, both medically and politically. But Chowdhury, for one, says he’s hopeful.
“We’re not asking anyone to trust us,” he says. “We’re saying to look at the data and see what we can do for patients and families who have had no other choices.” — Ned Potter
One patient changed the course of thoracic oncologist Narjust Florez’s career: a 43-year-old nonsmoker, an active runner, wife and mother who she’d just diagnosed with lung cancer. The patient’s response? “Please don’t tell my family.”
More women die of lung cancer than any other cancer, including, since 2018, a growing number of young women. Many delay seeking treatment because of the stigma associated with lung cancer, including the idea that people brought the illness upon themselves—the same reason Florez’s patient felt she couldn’t tell her loved ones about her diagnosis.
Now, Florez is on a mission to change the way the world sees lung cancer and to improve screening processes so patients don’t wait for treatment. She started the Florez Lab in 2019 to do that, but also to combat disparities in medical diagnosis and treatment affecting women, people of color, LGBTQ+ patients and non- English speakers. As a Latina woman, Florez is no stranger to discrimination in medicine herself. A 2021 study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed that 53 percent of leadership positions in oncology training programs were held by white males, while only 2.9 percent were held by minority women.
To address the imbalance, Florez began a social media community called #LatinasinMedicine that connects seasoned physicians with mentees. The initiative eventually evolved into her Florez Lab, a research group of diverse medical practitioners focusing on lung cancer research and social justice, while also providing a support system for underrepresented physicians and aspiring doctors. The Lab has published more than 40 studies and operates cancer diagnostic clinics in underserved areas in Boston. One of their projects is collecting patient-reported data that shows the psychosocial and financial needs of patients of different ages, ethnicities and genders. The data helps care providers tailor specific treatment plans and is used as a basis for grant applications and future research. Florez is also the principal investigator for the FINCH study, a first-of-its-kind research project that measures short- and long-term effects of lung cancer and melanoma treatments on fertility and sexual health—a topic long taboo in oncology clinics.
Next up for Florez? She’s implementing all that research to develop the first clinical program dedicated to young patients with lung cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she is the associate director of the Cancer Care Equity Program. The issue is closer to Florez’s heart than ever now; last year, the woman she regards as a second mother—her mentor throughout medical school—was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Says Florez, “[The diagnosis] solidified that my work and heart are in the right place.” —Meghan Gunn
When Ryder founded Maven, now the world’s largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health, more than half of U.S. counties didn’t have a single OB-GYN; few providers offered appointment hours before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m.; and a lack of focus on female health issues was reflected in stats like the U.S. having the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world. Ryder launched Maven in 2014 to try to fix all that—or at least sharply improve outcomes—by providing continuous, holistic care for patients through fertility, maternity, parenting, pediatrics and menopause. At the forefront of telehealth—the company served as a model for many of the virtual clinics started during the pandemic—Maven allows members to get customized care from anywhere, anytime.
It’s a concept that quickly caught on, first with investors, then with patients and employers. Early backers included celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, as well as an assortment of venture capital funds, leading Maven to become the first “unicorn”—a startup valued at $1 billion or more—in the women’s health space (its most recent valuation, as of November: $1.35 billion). The company now serves 15 million members across more than 175 countries and works with more than 500 employers to create lower-cost, higher-quality maternity health plans for employees, plus free access to telemedicine.
Among its innovative features: “Maven Wallet,” which helps users calculate the cost of fertility, adoption, surrogacy and other reproductive health treatments, while expediting reimbursement from employers for out-of-pocket expenses. “Pregnancy Options” counseling helps guide members in the post-Roe era. The company is now also expanding to provide care for women and families enrolled in Medicaid and growing globally, facilitated by its recent acquisition of Naytal, a U.K. digital health platform with a provider network encompassing more than 25 specialties that will help Maven expand throughout Europe.
The real payoff, though, has been in the outcomes for members. One-quarter of Maven users seeking fertility help become pregnant without assisted reproductive technology; overall, the platform has driven a 28 percent reduction in neonatal intensive care unit admissions compared to the general population; and over 90 percent of members return to work after maternity leave, versus the national average of 57 percent. Says Ryder: “Whether it’s the postpartum mom who was able to speak to a Maven lactation counselor in the middle of the night, or a same-sex couple who used Maven Wallet to navigate the financial complexities of their surrogacy journey, these stories are what keeps me and our team going every day.” —M.G.
More than one-third of Americans, including nearly half of those with annual incomes below $50,000, have skipped taking prescribed drugs because of high prices—something former radiologist Alex Oshmyansky witnessed firsthand among his patients, sometimes with devastating health consequences. But the “straw that broke the camel’s back was Martin Shkreli,” he says. When Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical executive, raised the price of Daraprim, a lifesaving drug used to treat parasitic infections, by 5,400 percent from $13.50 a pill to $750 in 2015, Oshmyansky decided he would take on price gouging by the pharmaceutical industry himself by selling off-patent drugs at manufacturing costs.
To realize his goal, he reached out to Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban for help, and together the pair last year launched Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, which sells common medications at dramatically lower-than-average prices by going directly to manufacturers to get their product, eliminating middlemen like wholesalers and pharmacy benefit managers that drive up costs to patients. The response was immediate: Some 1.3 million people signed up for accounts on its website in just its first 10 months, while sales hit at least $25 million in the first nine months, Forbes estimates. Cuban, though, says their real yardstick for success is “being able to reduce and someday eliminate patients having to choose between paying their bills and buying medications. Our hope is that we can bring transparency to an industry that has none.”
In fact, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company puts its pricing formula right on its website for the 1,200 or so medications they currently sell: Using the manufacturer’s price as a base, they add a 15 percent markup to cover their operating costs, a $3 pharmacist fee and $5 for shipping and handling. The result? Cholesterol-lowering med Rosuvastatin, the generic form of Crestor, costs $5.10 on their site, but retails for over $110 at other pharmacies. The generic version of diabetes medication Fortamet goes for $46.20 vs. $564 typically charged by other providers.
Since the launch, the company has been expanding its offerings rapidly, adding a wide variety of specialty drugs like Droxidopa (used to treat dizziness caused by diseases like Parkinson’s) and Imatinib (for a form of leukemia), where savings can be more than a thousand dollars per month, and branded products from pharmaceutical makers J&J/Janssen, Pfizer, Coherus, IBSA and Roche. They’ve begun working with health insurers to allow customers to tap into their coverage for purchases and with pharmacies to add local pickup options. They’re also opening a manufacturing facility in Dallas to produce medications that are in short supply directly for their customers.
Their latest disruption: Starting in July, the company will sell its first so-called biosimilar drug, Yusimry, an alternative to the immunology drug Humira, one of the bestselling medications of all time, at a cost of $569.27 plus dispensing and shipping fees, vs. $6,922 for a similar dosage of Humira. Announcing the news, Cuban tweeted: “The game has just changed.” —Kerri Anne Renzulli (Full Story)