Where Should Pharma Hunt For Academic Innovation?
According to Forbes, partnering with academia’s “usual suspects” could cause pharma to miss breakthrough research opportunities, for a few reasons:
1. Scientific talent is diffuse: There’s a surplus of excellent biomedical researchers in academia – which means strong faculty are joining institutions that aren’t high-profile players. The 20 top-funded centers by NIH in 2015 includes the University of Michigan, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Vanderbilt.
2. The “capabilities gap” has narrowed between top-tier centers and the rest: Powerful translational research tools are more accessible, while they used to be exclusively used by well-funded labs at elite institutions.
3. Pharma has an unrealized “contrarian opportunity” in R&D partnerships: Fred Wilson recently noted that if a room full of venture capitalists spurns a particular area, “go there. It is going to be profitable.”
