Venture Capitalists Shun Unprofitable Yet World-Saving Vaccines
- Investors pour billions into drugs providing a big payoff
- Some hope the pandemic could spur change in lopsided funding
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Venture capitalists have poured $42 billion into drug development over the past three years. That investment, equal to the National Institutes of Health’s annual spending on medical research, would seem like great news for a world waiting for help with a pandemic.
Yet nearly half the money has flooded into cancer and rare diseases with expensive cures. Only about $2.2 billion, or 5% of the total, went to drugs that prevent infections, according to a tally by Silicon Valley Bank, which offers banking services to venture-backed companies and others.