Still I'm not suggesting anything is atypical here (besides BBC declaring it a "breakthrough"). If anyone 'deserves' to be well capitalized it's companies doing research in this email to area with real clinical trials. It's hardly the last time people will gamble on preliminary results even beyond COVID, googling "preliminary results" will provide plenty of evidence.
typos? voice transcription errors? no idea what you intended to convey here...
It follows from the theory of comparative advantage. The big players can extract a lot more than you can from big companies but only a little more from the small ones.
I realize that you were talking about options which have slightly different rules, but overall the same applies, in ways adjusted for the rules of options. (I don't know those rules well)