One other point (and I could be way off on this, but I think I might be on to something)...
...sometimes in really high end computing problems (and for a given dollar cost), the later you start commissioning the hardware, the earlier you will get a result, since the technology is improving so quickly. We might just be at that point in drug development ?
For many indications, there are some pretty decent drugs on the market, and anything new is going either to have to be an improvement on what's available, or to address an 'unmet need'. There is also a huge amount of interesting stuff already in clinical trials. So the hurdles for putting stuff into trials are higher than ever before.
At the same time, some new techniques for making clinical trials quicker and easier ('pharmacogenomics', biomarker surrogate endpoints, etc.) are just possibly about to become readily available.
So, if you've got a shedload of new targets (and 200 is a huge number, given how many targets existing therapies address), it is entirely understandable that you're going to take your time, before committing the odd $100m on one of those targets, to make sure that you're right to do so. After all, delaying 12 months might just mean you get that new compound through the clinic more quickly anyway.
OTOH, Bayer could just be a crap organisation. |
