At a time of increasing costs and declining success rates for therapies, more and more biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are forming alliances with nonprofit disease foundations around pre-competitive and early stage research. This panel discussed how these alliances are working and the type of results they produce.

The Venture Philanthropy industry originated as a way to address the significant dearth in capital between the basic discovery and clinical research phases – typically known as the “valley of death.” The biggest challenge, as Kathy Smith of Fast Forward pointed out, is that at the same time pharmaceutical companies are getting more risky, venture capital is getting less risky and the medical research community is stuck in the middle. 

Richard Seabrook, Head of Business Development at Wellcome Trust, suggested that the word “philanthropy” was, in this case, actually a misnomer as it implies giving something away for free with no expectation of anything in return. Other panelists agreed that while the financial end, commercialization of a successful drug, and the philanthropic end, curing a disease, are different, they are not in conflict and can both take place along the same, patient-centric track.

Chris Earl, former Chief Executive Officer, BIO Ventures for Global Health, Kathryn Smith, Managing Director, FastForward LLC, Richard Seabrook, Head of Business Development, The Wellcome Trust, Stuart Peltz, President and Chief Executive Officer, PTC Therapeutics, Inc.

A great example is the alliance formed between the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), private investors and the pharmaceutical industry. With transparency and measurement at the heart of the partnership, MMV came up with a formula for assessing not just how much money its partners “got back” from every dollar they spent, but also where the value lay for them as researchers in different kinds of support, including in-kind contributions.