Investors now dismiss such technology and database products as low-profit commodities. These funders, including large drug-making corporations, increasingly turn to companies directly involved in the difficult work of finding a potential drug or bankable diagnostic product from the proteomics data. "There is always money for high-class stories," says Stephen Parker, chief financial officer of British-based Oxford GlycoSciences. "But the general climate is poor. Fortunately, OGS presently does not need to tap the market."
Other companies are also still enjoying long-term investments that allow them to hire staff and develop academic collaborations to get products ready for licensing to drug companies for large-scale clinical trials. The collaborations may give scientists freedom to explore interesting protein structures or functions without pressure to produce a blockbuster drug, says Janice Reichert, senior research fellow at the Tufts Center for the study of drug development. "They can start out with basic questions of what proteins ...
