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> how this research should be funded by tax dollars Tax dollars of which country? No country would want to pay for research requiring 100s of billions of dolla
by YetAnotherNick 2y ago
> how this research should be funded by tax dollars
Tax dollars of which country? No country would want to pay for research requiring 100s of billions of dollars, that would benefit everyone else equally.
- spondylosaurus 2y agoYou'd be surprised! Humira, the best-selling drug of all time, partly owes its existence to taxpayer-funded researchers in the UK. And then of course the irony is that AbbVie made a killing selling it in the US (and milking their US-specific patents for as long as humanly possible while patients in the UK were using cheaper generics...)
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago> partly owes its existence to taxpayer-funded researchers in the UK. Can you give a source of this? By government funded, most would mean grants not investment and expecting return from other country.
- spondylosaurus 2y agohttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058633/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058633/ The phage display technology that opened the door to Humira manufacturing was independently developed by three organizations, including the MRC Laboratory in the UK. The MRC went on to partner with some for-profit biotech/pharma companies to bring Humira to market. The other two organizations that made their own phage display breakthroughs were the Scripps Research Institute (US nonprofit that gets a lot of government funding/grants) and the DKFZ (German national research organization, not sure about their funding but definitely not a typical pharma joint). The big deal with Humira is that it's the first fully human monoclonal antibody to hit the shelves, and phage display is what made that possible.