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Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

>One of the big lies Big Pharma tells you is that R&D is expensive but the actual R&D is done primarily by government funding and research at colleges

Not an expert, but my understanding is that the kind of basic science R&D done by the government and academia is the simplest and easiest type of research to do by far. As it was explained to me- anyone can invent new compounds, the really really really hard low-percentage stuff is trialing that those new compounds are A) medically effective in people, and B) actually safe for people and don't have strong side effects.

Also, I believe that if academia actually does invent something novel & useful, they license it out to pharma companies for a % of the profits. Big universities are not shy at all about licensing their IP

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Pretty close. Without getting into what is “cheaper and easier”, the work you need to do to publish is a bit different from the amount of work you need to do to: identify targets, set up screening assays, screen hundreds of thousands of compounds, find/optimize a hit, set up secondary assays, optimize the lead compound, do all kinds of physchem/tox/safety studies, select an indication, test in animal models if good ones exist, try and find a suitable dose range, and put all that into a package to support a phase 1 trial. This is part what I’ve seen on the biology side of things, and it only scratches the surface of what the chemistry (small-batch synthesis and the scale-up), pharmacology, and associated people contribute.

Lots of people can synthesize and test a compound in vitro. Doing the above is another challenge because it needs to work reliably in humans.

And yes, from my understanding, universities are getting better at patenting and licensing their IP. Some even do some basic drug discovery IIRC.

Oh good, then the government and academia can stop spending $70b a year in basic R&D research. Since it's "simple and easy" then pharma can pay for it. Big brain move here.

This is entirely correct.

> Not an expert, but my understanding is that the kind of basic science R&D done by the government and academia is the simplest and easiest type of research to do by far.

Yeah it is easy to come up with stuff that works in a lab. For example, just see the HN submissions for new battery technology.

Don't know about the US, but in other countries a phase 1 trial might very well get done by academia, sometimes even phase 2.

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