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That's a good point. A couple things to add:

- startups that license potential molecules from academia often do a lot of discovery work. Academics generally do some of the target validation / biology, but dont usually produce optimized drug-like molecules. Most of the expense of drug discovery is actually screening compounds against a validated target (and validating the target), filtering those for potential leads, and then extensive chemistry work to get a development candidate). In the OP, drug discovery is target-to-hit + hit-to-lead + lead optimization. Most of this is done by startups, not academia

- the cost of capital is higher for startups than big pharma. big pharma companies generally have cost of capital around 10-12%, whereas for VC backed startups, cost of capital is like 20%+. this has a huge effect on valuation, and on the price companies must eventually charge for drugs to generate a return that attracts investors




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