This is a solid article by Jeffrey Flier (open-access in the Journal of Clinical Investigation) on the roles of academia and industry in drug discovery. Which is a topic that refuses to go away. I am prepared to swear that before starting this blog I had no idea of how many people are convinced that the drug industry does little or no research, and that academic labs discover all the drugs.

I will gladly send anyone unfamiliar with the real situation to this new article, because I think it does an excellent job of laying out just who does what in this business. Short answer: it’s a team effort, of course, and we all do different (and valuable) things. As Flier puts it, “Most fundamental biologic insights have resulted from work by academic scientists. . .“, but the view that all industry does is monetize academic discoveries “reflects a limited understanding of the work carried out by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries“. I could not agree more. When someone says that industry doesn’t do research, etc., I just want to ask them what I’ve been up to for. . .well, thirty years this fall. I hope that this article proves especially valuable because it’s coming from someone in academia – my own arguments on the subject, while vigorous and heartfelt, are surely taken as tendentious special pleading by the people whose views I’d most like to change. That link, though, will take you to over ten years of said arguments, for what that’s worth.

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Here’s another excellent look at the issue, from a professor at Stanford’s law school (Lisa Larrimore Ouellette). She specializes in patent law as it applies to translational research, and her conclusions are completely in line with what’s described above. Her post also addresses the returns on investment to the public seen from NIH research, whether everyone is “paying twice” or not when such research is commercialized, and what the various incentives really are for publicly- and privately-funded drug research. I strongly recommend anyone interested in these issues read it; it’s exceptionally detailed and clear-headed. Part of the frustration in talking about such issues, in fact, is dealing with people who have not thought about these issues in any detail, who may not realize that many of these issues even exist, but are nonetheless passionately convinced that they have grasped all they need to know.