Foundation-industry relationships--a new business model joint-venture philanthropy in therapy development

The business model for medical therapy development has changed drastically. Large companies that once conducted their own Research and Development (R&D) and funded all the preclinical studies, all phases of clinical development and marketing of the products are increasingly turning to others for more and more of the earlier work in hopes of being able to in-license a de-risked program well downstream, take it through the final phases of clinical development and into the marketplace. This new paradigm has required patient-advocacy foundations, especially in the rare-disease space, to become far more effective in building relationships with all the players along the therapy-development pathway -- academic scientists, government agencies, other foundations with overlapping interests, biotechs, small biopharmaceutical entities and even the larger industry companies. From the perspective of the patient-advocacy community, these increasingly essential public-private partnerships have taken on the nature of what could be called joint-venture philanthropy and involve a broad spectrum of collaborations and financial relationships between foundations and industry partners that are not without concerns about potential conflicts of interest.