[dekhn]

Although I don't think the majority of these companies will go on to make billions selling drugs, I think the past ten years of VC and pharma funding of basic life sciences researches is likely to pay off in many unexpected ways.

The field of molecular biology didn't exist before World War II; after, a number of funding managers at NIH recognized that there was an incipient science to augment biochemistry and other fields, and funded it through places like Rockefeller Institute (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25862750/).

The long term impact of these early scientists and funders who recognized the potential of MB has been enormous; it lead to the discovery of recombinant DNA, and many other important things which produced an explosion of research.

where I drive to work every day, there was only one biotech (Genentech) campus and now there are probably 20-30 different companies with enormous well-outfitted research labs all stuffed into one little corner of South San Francisco. "Overnight", biotech became a huge industry- overshadowed by the enormous tech industry- but in many ways, the "tech" part is ripe for disruption in ways that look just like the tech industry in 1997.

Either way, it will be interesting to see what is the state of the art 30-40 years from now, assuming the research infrastructure continues apace.