At the exhibit hall, I talked with several friends who are now in industry and, interestingly, all seem energized and excited about their new life away from the culture of grant writing and publish or perish. Sadly, when National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding rates go below 10%, an excellent scientist can publish and perish. Under these circumstances, the opportunities of a well-financed company can seem like paradise.
I was impressed by the enthusiasm of my friends in industry. One said his company had 20 molecules ready for phase 1 testing and another said he already had five molecules in people. Those pipelines sound terrific, but moving those molecules forward requires cash. When the stock market plunges and credit stays crunched, the cash evaporates and products can languish.
Consider what happened to Savient Pharmaceuticals at the ACR meeting. Savient Pharmaceuticals is developing a new treatment for gout (By way of disclosure, Duke University, where I am a professor, has had a major role in its development). When the Wall Street analysts heard something they did not like during a plenary presentation, the stock price of Savient plummeted. The ultimate effect of this change is unknown but it could certainly complicate, if not slow, the development of a needed treatment for people with the most refractory forms of this disease.
With the current financial pressures on industry, “me too” drugs may never get their start, and even “me better” drugs may fail along the long path for approval unless they are really much better and the payoff on the investment seems big.
On the other side of the public–private partnership, the NIH struggles. With a soaring federal budget deficit in the many trillions and the immediate exigencies of the bank bailout, increases in NIH funding are doubtful and many would be happy if it just stayed stable. To its credit, the NIH is trying to preserve funding for young people and the ACR Research and Education Foundation (REF) has been visionary in supporting young investigators whose applications for K awards just miss the pay-line. Those are important trends, but it is time to engage the NIH in a serious dialog on the best portfolio for the funding of investigators, both young and old.
Resonance Between Industry and Academia
The exhibit area and poster sessions may have been at opposite ends of the Moscone Center, but these realms are really not separate. Rather, they are inextricably tied together as the boundary between public and private forever shifts and blurs. Industry and academia are not two separate mountains. In today’s flat world, they occupy space next to each other on the same wide plain and their fortunes can rise and fall together.
