statnews.com/2019/12/10/lar… 81% of Pfizer's and J&J's new drugs were discovered by third parties. Pharma companies mostly don't do their own discovery; they partner with and acquire smaller biotech companies.
This is, btw, a bad argument for the notion that Pfizer and J&J don't contribute to pharmaceutical innovation; paying to outsource research *does* contribute to that research being done.
What it means is that preclinical-stage biotech startups are mostly not competing with Big Pharma so much as selling to Big Pharma. The best early-stage R&D happens outside the big companies, and pharma execs *know this*.
This is not news to people in biotech but I keep seeing people outside the industry get confused about it. “How will a brand new startup ever be able to afford to bring a drug to market?” They don’t! They partner with bigger companies. Or license IP, or get acquired.
