Bio-physicist Manuel Navia spoke to a Public Health Administration class Friday in Lantz about the entrepreneurial development of drugs for developing countries.

Navia is the vice president of Essential Therapeutics, a drug-discovery firm in Massachusetts, and he gives lectures on how health technology has influenced the cost of care for people with diseases such as AIDS.

Navia began his lecture by talking about an idea called structure-based drug design, which involves a process of determining the architecture of a disease molecule, then designing a small drug molecule to “plug up” the disease.

The problem with this is that most drugs produced are costly and, in third world countries where money is scarce and diseases such as AIDS are prevalent, there is not enough money to pay for the treatment.

“It’s like a horse race, ” Navia said. “Drugs keep dropping off, but others keep coming out.”

Navia explained three things to consider when pushing a drug to be patented, which are reducing expenses, compressing time and reducing the interest rate.

The main focus of Navia’s lecture was finding ways to reduce the cost of a drug so it is beneficial for all people and not just those who have an abundance of money.

One idea for doing this is using technology to keep costs down. By using a computer, one person can accomplish structure-based drug design instead of an entire laboratory of scientists who all must be paid for their work.

To deal with the time and interest aspect of this idea, he suggested lowering the time in which it takes patents to go through, which can take up to 15 years.

Navia hopes that one day there will be a solution to the cost problems with drugs.