Academia and industry: allocating credit for discovery and development of new therapies.

The discovery and development of new therapies involves input from academic researchers and the biopharmaceutical industry, but the nature and relative importance of their contributions has been the subject of debate. Recent concerns about drug pricing are among the factors stimulating renewed interest in this question, which has important implications for academia, industry, and society at large. To facilitate understanding and informed public discussion, this Viewpoint will offer a high-level overview of the unique, overlapping, and evolving contributions of academia and industry to drug discovery (Figure 1). A very brief history Efforts to develop effective treatments are driven by the universal human desire to enhance health and reduce suffering from disease. For most of human history, healing traditions and folk remedies bore a limited relationship to biology or disease pathogenesis. This began to change during the 19th century, as scientists in academia studied mechanisms of biological regulation, and early pharmaceutical companies sought chemical agents to counter specific diseases. The academic bioscience research effort began in earnest in universities, hospitals, and research institutes in the late 19th century (1). This expanded during the 20th century and was greatly accelerated when the US established the NIH as a dominant source of funding (2). The NIH stimulated growth of the research enterprise, which produced many insights into mechanistic biology and disease pathogenesis. In [...] Viewpoint