James Foote, CEO of First Ascent Biomedical, Inc., supports the Expedited Investigational New Drug (IND) Pilot Program but urges the FDA to be more ambitious in its scope. He argues that the FDA should modernize its evidentiary standards to recognize human-derived functional evidence as translational data and establish a pathway for platform diagnostics to support new indications for already approved drugs.

Mitchell Berger, commenting in a personal capacity, supports the FDA's efforts to accelerate early-stage clinical development through the proposed pilot program. He advocates for prioritizing drug repurposing, ensuring clear ethical safeguards and data ownership rules, and securing adequate FDA staffing and resources.