Funny you specifically mention them:
Summit Therapeutics embodies the exact pharma model we've been critiquing - their business strategy isn't about bearing enormous R&D risks alone, but about strategically distributing those risks while maintaining private profit potential.
Their lead product, Ivonescimab, wasn't discovered or developed by Summit at all. They simply licensed it from Akeso for $500 million upfront.
They received up to $72.5 million from BARDA (taxpayer money) for Ridinilazole development and another $7.8 million from CARB-X (a public-private partnership) for SMT-738.
Their "innovation" model relies heavily on academic partnerships - Ridinilazole originated from publicly-funded university research, and they're leveraging MD Anderson's infrastructure rather than building their own.
Meanwhile, their executives received enormous compensation packages - in 2023, just two executives (Zanganeh and Soni) received compensation valued at $44.2 million, representing over 74% of their entire GAAP R&D budget that year.
Even their clinical trials for Ivonescimab combinations are being funded by Pfizer, not Summit.
This isn't a small company heroically bearing enormous R&D costs - it's a company that has masterfully distributed those costs across government grants, academic partnerships, and external collaborations while positioning itself to capture the profits if any of these products succeed.