Bioscience Think Tank Leaders Outline Industry Financing Problems

Last week’s stories about the future of grants for the younger generation of NIH investigators is just one piece of the larger puzzle over the state of funding biotech research. The Scientist offers a useful summary of the major stumbling blocks in pharmaceutical development and how they relate to financing questions in the drug industry, in university labs, at the NIH, and at start-up companies. Connected to this issue are questions about the commercialization of academic research and the status of immigrant researchers:

Should we even expect commercially-useful information to originate from university research? We say yes, absolutely. Given the magnitude of current funding where the NIH spends $28 billion per year on grants for biological research, we are justified in asking where this money goes and what sort of return the public taxpayer should expect. For those who argue that university-based biological research should not be used for commercial purposes, but only training purposes, it is perhaps worthwhile to point out that many foreign students return to their own countries armed with the knowledge and experience, paid for by the American taxpayer, to commercialize science.

The authors also enumerate the benefits and pitfalls of various funding models and institutions that attempt to bridge the gap between basic lab research and products that will make people healthier. The overview is a set piece for their forthcoming work at the The Committee on Bioscience Innovations. Their efforts in this space could well be worth watching.

Tags: drug companies, funding

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