New models of life science innovation are emerging: What can we learn and how can we help them grow?
Written by Jun Axup, Amanda Cashin, Diana Joseph, Lara Mangravite, and Will Richardson
Introduction: What’s happening
Where is scientific research supposed to happen? In the last century or two, science has lived in two main homes: The academy and the corporation. These models have their benefits — after all they were invented to improve the state of the art before them. Before the 19th century, scientists worked as private citizens (think: Benjamin Franklin, key, kite) or as members of clubs (think: The Royal Society or The Reform Club in Around the World in 80 Days). Since then, for all the support and intellectual freedom offered by the academy, and all the commercial power offered by the corporation, gaps remain. What if your idea is too translational or complex for the academy? What if your idea does not align with commercial timelines or objectives?
In the last few years, we’ve seen a variety of models designed specifically to fund and make a home for research previously seen as unsuited for either the academy or the corporation. This work stands to open new frontiers in science, accelerate commercialization and make compelling scientific solutions available to many more people.
We’re inspired to write about these efforts now for several reasons. First, we’re seeing more and more signals that innovative funders feel compelled to fill the open space left behind by the university and the commercial firm. Second, several important funding experiments are reaching the mid-cycle point from which they must decide how best to define success, and chart their path towards sustainability beyond their initial funding cycle. Third, we’re energized by the work of others such as Overedge Catalog, a catalog of new funding efforts compiled by Samuel Arbesman, and we’re eager to build on those foundations. Ultimately, we want to improve awareness of and access to funding that can bring important science into real impact.
In this article, we share our case that the phenomenon of expanding funding models is real and is delivering important lessons. We share extensive examples, and point to a future in which this work impacts science and economics more broadly.
Why now?
The seeds of this change were sown by an emerging wave of modern funders - typically technology entrepreneurs - who have preferred to take a more directive role in their investments than previous generations. These funders view themselves as “funder-doers” - they not only fund new models to accelerate innovation, they also play a hands-on role in operating them. The identification of the need for new innovation models and a number of new initiatives (including the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub) aimed at tackling this need launched prior to Covid-19. The adoption of and attention on these more directive strategies has been accelerated by both the pandemic and the subsequent economic downturn. During the pandemic, the rapid development and distribution of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics served as a proof of concept to the world that life science innovation matters for global populations. The speed of development and breadth of distribution for COVID-related innovations was greatly enabled by abundant funding, non-traditional partnerships, and a shared sense of urgency across organizations required for product discovery, development, and distribution. As the economy then slowed, many private investors were forced to narrow their funding lens towards lower-risk innovations that are closer to market-readiness. This narrowing left innovators with fewer investment options and thus greater openness to new funding models — while simultaneously exposing funding niches to new investor types.
In parallel, many scientists and entrepreneurs have dreamed up innovations with parameters that are not well suited to standard forms of investment. Multiple classes of innovation fit this description: public goods (e.g., large-scale data assets or research tools designed for wide distribution), low-revenue products (e.g., antibiotics), products with uncertainty in development or commercial paths (e.g., digital health tools), or products with lengthy paths to market (e.g., anti-aging treatments). These factors have created a joint willingness by both funders and scientists to approach innovation in new ways. The nexus of all of these themes is people. Scientists, funders and entrepreneurs — change-makers — are interested in creating new tools to guide innovation toward a broader set of goals, and reorienting the tools we already have.
Examples of new innovation models
These macro trends have inspired a host of financially significant funding experiments driven by collaboration between funders, scientists, life sciences entrepreneurs and investors. Each experiment is designed for a specific purpose and each has lessons for the ecosystem. And interestingly, the pace of the emergence of these organizations is accelerating:
[2016] Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, New York - “CZI announces a $600 million commitment to create the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a new research hub to bring scientists and engineers together from Stanford, UCSF, Berkeley, along with the world-class engineering team at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to collaborate, make breakthroughs in medicine and develop new technologies”
[2016] Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, San Francisco Bay Area - “Billionaire tech entrepreneur Sean Parker announced that he is giving $250 million through his foundation to launch the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a collaboration between some of the nation’s top cancer research institutes that aims to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies”
[2021] Convergent Research, Greater Boston and San Francisco Bay Area - “Why Billionaires Ken Griffin And Eric Schmidt Are Spending $50 Million On A New Kind Of Scientific Research”
[2021] Arc Institute, San Francisco Bay Area - “The Arc Institute [launches] as a nonprofit research institution aimed at advancing scientific breakthroughs in complex diseases with investments totaling more than $650 million from founding donors including Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison”
[2022] Arcadia Biosciences, San Francisco Bay Area - “Can this tick biologist and her team of ‘weirdo science’ enthusiasts change the future of scientific research?”
[2022] ARPA-H, Nationwide - “ARPA-H: Accelerating biomedical breakthroughs”
[2023] Blackbird Labs, Baltimore - “Blackbird Labs, a Next-Generation Life Sciences Accelerator, Launches with $100 Million and Foundational Collaboration with Johns Hopkins University”
[2023] Sanford Laboratories for Innovative Medicines, San Diego - “Sanford Labs launches to propel breakthrough scientific discoveries to patients”
[2024] Yosemite Ventures, San Francisco Bay Area - "Reed Jobs’s Yosemite Combines Venture Capital, Grants to Boost Cancer Care”
[2024] Arena Bioworks, Greater Boston - “Arena BioWorks Launches as a Privately Funded, Fully Independent Biomedical Institute to Shorten the Path from Insight to Therapeutics”
What’s next
Over the next decade, additional models will emerge and existing models will be tested. It’s clear there’s an urgent need and opportunity for these new models to succeed in accelerating life sciences innovation and drive impact across the healthcare ecosystem.
As these new innovation models continue to launch and mature, now is a unique moment in time to study them. We believe that researching these models, convening folks around them and developing best practices can further unlock capital from new sources such as foundations and family offices, provide investigators with additional paths to bringing their research from bench to bedside, open up early-career scientists to new opportunities, and ultimately establish these models as pillars of the life sciences ecosystem of tomorrow. What becomes possible when life sciences investigation has so many more places to thrive?
If you’re interested in learning more or have a perspective you’d like to share, please reach out to us.