Producing progress? Issues to consider

There is a growing gap in productivity in the biopharmaceutical industry. The money spent on developing new drugs has increased substantially, but the hoped-for dramatic increase in new therapies based on recent revolutions in molecular biology and genetics has yet to materialize. Long approval times, high-failures rates, and high-competition account in part for this situation. Some argue that entrepreneurs are not promoting fundamental, new discoveries and instead are simply profiting from the knowledge generated by academia. In fact, publicly funded research is driving progress in a completely new field and the development of a completely new landscape of medicine. The knowledge thereby acquired has dramatically changed the approach to targeting disease. In response, a new model is needed, one that addresses how investment in innovation is driven, but also how innovation is done. [Contrib Sci 10:29-34 (2014)]