AFAIK, the research done by tax payers is the underlying biology. In other words, researching that protein X is responsible for biological processes A, B, and C

AFAIK, the research done by tax payers is the underlying biology. In other words, researching that protein X is responsible for biological processes A, B, and C and changing X to Y increases A and B but decreases C. Then, it's still the responsibility of pharma companies to figure out how to create a compound that can then safely trigger the change of protein X -> Y