[Retric]

Most US medical research is highly dependent of public funding. Company's are only interested once the risks drop enough and the rewards are very near.

Looking at just research and eliminating patent dogging efforts, Drug companies don't pay for nearly as much research as you might think.

[vibrio]

I agree that pubic funding is an essential foundation for this industry, but disagree that the risk drops before industry gets a hold of technology. Large clinical studies are crazy expensive for many good and many bad reasons, and many of them will fail giving zero ROI. I agree that much of Pharma, (especially, but not only, some very bad actors) spend more on IP Attys and Commercial efforts than R&D, and that hurts me to watch. Academia doesn't do the research that is required to get drugs to people--who does PK and ADME studies on hundreds of animals? No one excpet industry does the detailed manufacturing process development and critical parameter work required to support approvals, especially in biologics. Yes, many drug companies need to be fixed (and some outright eliminated), but the industry does serve a purpose.

[aantix]

>One study assessed both capitalized and out-of-pocket costs as about US$1.8 billion and $870 million, respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development

These numbers certainly aren't risk-free. Even if the company has 10 billion in cash, how many potential research leads can they bring to market? Not many.

[refurb]

Company's are only interested once the risks drop enough and the rewards are very near.

Clearly not true. Less than 5% of molecules that drug companies pick up make it to market. Huge failure rate.

[Retric]

1:20 is relatively good odds. A random molecule is something like 0.000000001%.