Navigating a pharma or biotech startup company from preclinical proof of concept of some new and potentially useful technology to the stage of running clinical trials is hard at the best of times. To a first approximation, institutional investors, those with deep enough pockets to fund the enormous regulatory costs imposed upon drug manufacture and clinical trials, do not fund new directions, new mechanisms, truly novel therapies. We can debate whether those at fault are more the venture capitalists who run the funds or the limited partners who hold the purse strings, but the end result is a strong aversion to well understood risks – such as anything that is new. Investors like small tweaks on proven existing drugs, which is how we end up with overinvestment in strategies for lowering LDL chol…
The Catalytic Antibody Work of Covalent Biosciences is Headed for the Public Domain
Navigating a pharma or biotech startup company from preclinical proof of concept of some new and potentially useful technology to the stage of running clinical trials is hard at the best of times. To a first approximation, institutional investors, those with deep enough pockets to fund the enormous regulatory costs imposed upon drug manufacture and clinical trials, do not fund new directions, new mechanisms, truly novel therapies. We can debate whether those at fault are more the venture capitalists who run the funds or the limited partners who hold the purse strings, but the end result is a strong aversion to well understood risks – such as anything that is new. Investors like small tweaks on proven existing drugs, which is how we end up with overinvestment in strategies for lowering LDL chol…