[exratione]

You don't need to crowdfund any more than it costs to convince a group with $1bn that they can make money on this by spending that to commercialize your demonstration. That is often just a few million, or even less, depending on how compelling your data and how good your connections.

Most of that $1bn and decade of time is make-work created by ever more risk-averse regulators. The actual process of creating something, making a product, and gathering reasonable data on safety is a fraction of that.

[ig1]

Why would a company invest a $1bn on a drug they can't patent ?

Also drug companies can't just decide they don't want to get FDA approval because it's too much work. They have to work within existing regulations whether they like them or not.

[jonlucc]

Wouldn't a group with $1bn to spend want a patent to ensure they would get a return on that money?

[refurb]

That's what I don't get. Sure you could crowdfund a few preclinical experiments. But where do you get the ~$100M to get it approved? It would be awesome if someone said "here's $100M, don't worry about paying me back", but I wouldn't count on it.

[Fomite]

I'm curious to hear about what parts of the clinical trial process are "make-work" and which are "reasonable data on safety".