Nowadays the economic incentives are the other way around. It used to be that pharmaceutical companies did everything in-house, from early discovery to clinical testing, and Central Research did discovery and lead optimization. That system provided stability for the employees.
Compare that to the pharmco carousel that you can see in action today in Boston and San Diego. The major players are IP brokers that buy startups with promising compounds (good if you are a lawyer or in marketing), but the science is done by university startups which are either bought out or fail, and the number of very capable people on postdocs (because they are between startups) is plain staggering. Try putting your kids through college doing that.
Is anyone surprised that I'm very suspicious of anyone preaching the startup gospel? They are inevitably venture capitalists or marketeers, or fresh out of college and still very green.
Add to that companies like Valeant whose business model is to buy companies that already have drugs on the market and fire most of the research staff. This is predicated on the belief that in-house R&D is nearly always a long term money loser. Better to crowdsource R&D and only pay for the winners.
"the number of very capable people on postdocs ... is plain staggering"
What's wrong with doing a postdoc? I'm in the UK, but here a postdoc is a normal part of the science career path. It pays reasonably well for academia and is a first step towards being a lecturer (assistant professor).
We are not talking about the academic career ladder, we are talking about the career path of med. chemists in general. To an increasing level, early discovery happens at academic startups, and when the company fails (because their two or three compounds fell through) all the scientists are out of work. The fastest new gig available is a postdoc, and the salary is a real problem when you try to put kids through college on that.
This model takes the "scientists are cogs in a machine" paradigm to a new level. Of course med. chemists are cogs in machines, lead discovery is nothing but finding ligands for targets (perhaps it's also finding the proper target), and your scientific training hopefully equipped you for that. If one project fails, there will be others, and it's management that chooses those that will go forward. But it used to be that you didn't change your employer with your project, Big Pharmco always had plenty of projects going. Nowadays it's the employee that bears all the risks, and that includes the risk of poor management. It's no longer cogs in machines, it's cogs with legs.
Have you heard of the postdoctoral treadmill? That's what happens in the states. Postdoc treadmill is another source of cheap labor for labs, without any stability and job prospects.
Compare that to the pharmco carousel that you can see in action today in Boston and San Diego. The major players are IP brokers that buy startups with promising compounds (good if you are a lawyer or in marketing), but the science is done by university startups which are either bought out or fail, and the number of very capable people on postdocs (because they are between startups) is plain staggering. Try putting your kids through college doing that.
Is anyone surprised that I'm very suspicious of anyone preaching the startup gospel? They are inevitably venture capitalists or marketeers, or fresh out of college and still very green.