[RAB1138]

Relevant: Eroom's law: http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v11/n3/fig_tab/nrd3681_F1....

So what do we do here? We're not just underfunding basic biology research, it's rolling down hill and affecting the efficacy of our products oriented pharma R&D investments.

Best proposal I've heard to pull out of this trend? Computational biology: simulate different tissue types and organ systems (their dynamics, metabolic pathways, flow of matter/energy/information) and expose the simulated tissues to potential drugs in high-throughput simulations. Test exponentially more compounds and prune obvious failure from the chemical structure tree early and often. What you're left with is a restricted set of compounds to try synthesizing and taking to trial.

[jjoonathan]

They've been doing that (and other comp bio techniques) for decades so it's already factored into the price. It's also a lot harder and less reliable than it sounds, unfortunately.