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Comment by kgwgk | Hacker News Reader

> This overview however omits the costs incurred by all those who were not bought-in, i.e. the biotechs funded by VC, etc, who never get bought.

That’s indeed included in the price paid for the biotechs who were bought-in. The piece mentions that “Between 2016 and 2020, fourteen of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies spent $577 billion on share buybacks and dividends versus $521 billion on R&D” but doesn’t tell us that they spent even more on M&A.

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I was referring to start-ups that are not acquired. For example a VC may fund a range of biotech companies, but only recoup on those that are acquired. Equally there are many examples of drug-based biotech that simply fail for a range of reasons, losing all the money invested in them.

The point being that the general concept that acquired research may be more efficient compared to in-house research would have to account not only for the failed in-house research, but also for the failed research within companies that are not acquired, or which fail for other reasons.

> For example a VC may fund a range of biotech companies, but only recoup on those that are acquired.

For those that are acquired they “recoup” much more than their investment. The idea is to get back the total investment in all the funded companies - and the some.

For an individual VC firm that may be the case, but perhaps not for the whole drug discovery sector?

nature of the beast, high risk early on, cheap, price goes up as derisking occurs. for startups and drugs. risk is priced in. to everything

The question I was addressing was whether the NIBR was more or less economically efficient than a more free-wheeling culture of start-ups failing or succeeding, with the successes transitioning either to "Big Pharma", or becoming bigger themselves.

The author of the article implies that the NIBR approach was more productive, but didn't compare it to an alternative that consumed similar amounts of capital.

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