The Problem with Biotech’s Love Affair with Academia

Biotech and academia are the original odd couple. One is driven by bold bets on untested science and the hope of life-changing therapies. The other thrives on meticulous peer review, incremental discoveries, and an aversion to anything resembling market forces. Together, they’ve produced some of the greatest innovations in medicine. Yet, for all their shared triumphs, the relationship is far from perfect.

For startups, academia is both muse and millstone—an essential source of groundbreaking ideas but also a maze of bureaucracy, mismatched incentives, and cultural resistance. Perhaps it’s time for a little couples counseling.

1. The Publication Trap: Publish or Perish

In academia, success is measured in papers, not patients. Researchers are rewarded for publishing in high-impact journals and securing grants, rather than for moving their discoveries toward the market. The result? An entire system incentivized to produce incremental findings rather than breakthrough therapies.

Imagine a researcher who develops a promising oncology therapy. Instead of forming partnerships to fund clinical trials, they spend years publishing paper after paper on marginally different preclinical results. By the time they’re ready to think about commercialization, competing therapies have already hit the market.

This isn’t just a hypothetical. It’s a reflection of the structural inertia that keeps many academic discoveries stuck in the lab.

2. The TTO Bottleneck: Bureaucracy vs. Innovation

Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) were created to bridge the gap between academia and industry, turning intellectual property into commercial products. In practice, they often act as gatekeepers, demanding steep equity stakes and dragging out licensing negotiations.

Picture a university spinout developing a cutting-edge gene therapy. The founders are eager to attract private investors, but the TTO insists on a 30% equity stake, making the deal unpalatable. Negotiations stretch on for months—time that competitors use to advance their pipelines. By the time the spinout secures funding, the market opportunity has evaporated.

These bottlenecks aren’t unique to any one institution. They’re emblematic of a broader tension between academia’s desire for control and industry’s need for speed.

3. Risk Aversion: The Kryptonite of Innovation

Biotech thrives on moonshots. Transformative therapies like CRISPR gene editing or mRNA vaccines were born from bold, high-risk experiments. Academia, on the other hand, often rewards cautious, incremental progress. Grants favor projects with predictable outcomes, not ambitious leaps into the unknown.

Imagine a spinout focusing on a novel microbiome therapy. To secure academic funding, the founders design experiments that are almost guaranteed to succeed—but offer little clinical relevance. Meanwhile, a competitor, backed by risk-tolerant venture capital, gambles on untested but potentially groundbreaking approaches. When the competitor’s therapy succeeds, the spinout is left wondering what might have been.

This culture of caution isn’t limited to the lab. It permeates the entire academic ecosystem, from funding bodies to tenure committees, creating a mismatch between the needs of biotech and the priorities of academia.

4. Zombie Projects: When Grants Keep the Dead Alive

Academia has a way of keeping unpromising projects on life support. As long as grants keep flowing, research teams can continue publishing without making meaningful progress toward commercialization.

Imagine a project developing a niche enzyme therapy. After a decade of funding and a dozen papers, the researchers have little to show beyond theoretical applications. The market potential is negligible, but the project persists, diverting resources from more viable endeavors. In biotech, where funding is finite, these zombie projects can be a drag on the entire ecosystem.

5. Intellectual Property: The Great Tug-of-War

Intellectual property (IP) is biotech’s most valuable asset. Yet, in academia, IP often becomes a point of contention rather than collaboration. Universities eager to maximize royalties or equity stakes can deter investors and slow down commercialization.

Consider a spinout negotiating with its parent university for control of a groundbreaking diagnostic tool. The university demands not only royalties but also a significant equity stake, leaving the founders scrambling to make the deal viable for external investors. These disputes can take months—or even years—to resolve, delaying the therapy’s path to market.

What Can Be Done?

The biotech-academia partnership isn’t doomed, but it does need a reboot. Here’s how the relationship could be improved:

1. Incentivize Commercial Impact: Academia needs to reward researchers for advancing therapies to market, not just for publishing papers. This could mean creating grant programs that prioritize commercialization milestones over academic outputs.
2. Streamline TTOs: Technology Transfer Offices should focus on facilitating deals, not controlling them. Lower equity demands, faster negotiations, and a willingness to share risk would go a long way in attracting investors.
3. Encourage Risk-Taking: Funding bodies must be willing to back high-risk, high-reward projects. Without moonshots, the biotech industry will stagnate.
4. Cull Zombie Projects: Universities should critically evaluate the market potential of long-running projects and redirect funding from unviable research to more promising endeavors.
5. Foster Industry Partnerships: Early collaboration between academia and biotech companies can bridge cultural divides and align goals, ensuring that promising discoveries don’t languish in academic purgatory.

Final Thoughts: A Love That Needs Work

Biotech and academia are like two partners who need each other but can’t stop stepping on each other’s toes. Academia provides the raw ideas, the foundational science that fuels biotech innovation. But without the speed, risk appetite, and market focus of industry, many of these ideas will remain trapped in the lab.

To make this partnership work, academia must embrace its role not just as a source of knowledge but as a driver of impact. Because in biotech, great ideas aren’t enough—they need to reach patients to truly change the world. And that requires more than love; it requires action.