Yes, but that assumes intelligent investors willing and capable of analyzing for long term profits. Research science often incurs short (or even long) term loss for an eventual extreme gain. There will be many failures and lots of money spent before that point. It's like a startup, but less clear of a plan for monetization and even longer time to product. Capitalism tends not to support this.
"Cancer Research" and "Energy Crisis" seem to be pretty good sources of funding these days. A lot of labs have small projects/applications in these two fields since it often greatly helps them get funding.