| Betting isn’t just for sports anymore…
Last week, prediction market company Kalshi announced that users will now be able to place bets on clinical trial outcomes and FDA regulatory decisions. The company, in partnership with data firm AppliedXL, launched the markets as a pilot program, starting with roughly a dozen contracts tied to late-stage trials from established pharma companies. For instance, you can bet on when the FDA will approve Takeda Pharmaceutical’s oveporexton, Intellia Therapeutics’ lonvo-z, and Eli Lilly’s retatrutide and VERVE-102. You can also bet on when Intellia Therapeutics will submit a biologics license application for lonvo-z and when Compass Pathways will submit a new drug application for COMP360 psilocybin. Insider access
Kalshi is painting the move as a transparency play, saying the move could surface pharmaceutical information typically not made public. Not everyone is convinced, though — Novellia CEO Shashi Shankar is worried the model invites exactly the kind of insider trading regulators have already seen on prediction marketplaces like Kalshi. Just last week, news reports emerged saying a teleprompter operator made six figures on Kalshi betting on speeches he had advance copies of. And earlier this year, a Special Forces soldier made more than $400,000 on Polymarket betting on a raid he knew was coming. Shankar noted that a Phase 3 clinical trial typically involves several hundred people — biostatisticians, data and safety personnel, site coordinators, sponsor staff and so on. “If employment verification couldn’t stop a guy running a teleprompter, I’m not sure how it’s going to stop someone who already knows the numbers within a massive drug development program. This isn’t to knock folks involved with drug development, but to ignore that very likely outcome is foolish,” he remarked. Trial integrity risks
Amy Bucher, chief behavioral officer at patient engagement startup Lirio, said prediction markets could influence the behavior of people working on the trials. Once a prediction becomes public, it becomes part of the environment that researchers, patients and sponsors operate in — and behavioral research shows that expectations can quietly influence attention, interpretation and decision-making, often without people realizing it, she explained. “My concern isn't that scientists would suddenly act unethically because a prediction market exists. Most researchers are deeply committed to scientific integrity. But humans are susceptible to cognitive biases, social influence and incentives,” she stated. When there are publicized expectations whether a trial will succeed or fail, these expectations could influence how the people involved in the trial allocate funding and interpret ambiguous findings, as well as what evidence they pay attention to and how they communicate about the results, Bucher said. — By Katie Adams |
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