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Venture capital in academia: does present reality call for more nonprofit venture?

For the past 40 years in biotech, venture capitalists have visited academic medical centers, invested in ideas that taxpayers have funded, created new companies (newcos), and made handsome financial gains from these investments. This investment has led to a boom in the creation of newcos, and wonder...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of clinical investigation 2020-07, Vol.130 (7), p.3336-3338
Main Authors: Ting, David T, Knowles, Julius Js
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:For the past 40 years in biotech, venture capitalists have visited academic medical centers, invested in ideas that taxpayers have funded, created new companies (newcos), and made handsome financial gains from these investments. This investment has led to a boom in the creation of newcos, and wonderful therapies have emerged as a result. Unfortunately, this shift in funding has not benefitted the academic medical center as much, with young talent pulled away from the academic world into biotech. In essence, funds have flowed from the government to venture capitalists to pharmaceutical companies. But we have an opportunity that is even more important, given the clear need to support hospitals and future health care investments, to leverage those ideas to shore up hospital balance sheets, and to fund future medical care. This is not to say that the model is broken -- far from it. It is only that a moderate reallocation of funding from venture capitalists to the inventors of those ideas can create a virtuous circle and further improve the ecosystem.
ISSN:0021-9738
1558-8238
DOI:10.1172/JCI138642