TechTakes

the problem is that trials are pretty expensive, we're talking something about billion dollars per compound range for the entire thing from phase 1 to market, and even then some 85%+ fail. (of course phase 1 failure is cheaper than phase 3 failure) at this point all IP is owned by bean counters backed by VCs or one of few mammoth biopharma gigacorporations

i understand that a lots of new drugs is developed this way: an sfba startup gets funded, does a thing, sucks VCs off for few tens of millions of dollars, tries to push something to phase 1 and then either doesn't that and collapses or does that, sells IP to someone bigger, and also collapses (because they fired biologists to hire compliance), or if they don't collapse, they repeat until they do, accumulating half-baked IP along the way

btw this is part of the reason why antibodies are such a big thing, small changes can keep these things patented basically indefinitely and at the same time these are hard enough to make that generics will be pretty hard to impossible. one sane solution would be to try some state-funded research in this area