[Retric]

Pfizer, on the other hand, told the Financial Times that the company's dealings with Theranos were limited. "We've done only very limited historical exploratory work with Theranos through a few pilot projects,

So, the root of this could simply have been poor reporting not deception. I mean you generally don't do multiple pilot projects with vaporware and Pfizer is a huge drug company.

PS: 400M is a lot of money, but probably not enough to do much R&D and start jumping though the hoops if the FDA get's picky.

[dbcooper]

A prototype device probably costs $150k to $200k to build, so $400M should buy an enormous amount of R&D!

[Retric]

Matthew Herper recently totaled R&D spending from the 12 leading pharmaceutical companies from 1997 to 2011, and found that they had spent $802 billion to gain approval for just 139 drugs: a staggering $5.8 billion per drug.

Granted, we are talking about medical devices, but as soon as the FDA wants clinical trials things get damm expencive and 400M is a drop in the bucket. 200K is about a weeks budget for a well staffed modern lab. Sure, you can get a minor iteration in a week, but nobody is going to send anything down the pipeline without a lot more research than that.