In an unidentified laboratory located between Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a splinter group of scientists is searching for the next billion-dollar drug.
Funded with $500 million from some of America’s richest business families, the group has caused a stir in the academic world by offering seven-figure salaries to attract qualified university professors for a treasure hunt. His self-declared goal: to avoid the barriers and bureaucracy that slow down the traditional paths of scientific research at universities and pharmaceutical companies, and to discover a range of new medicines (initially for cancer and brain diseases) that can be produced and sold quickly .
Startup braggadocio is customary, and many former academics have founded biotechnology companies, eager to get rich from their great discovery. This group, called Arena BioWorks, a name proudly borrowed from a Teddy Roosevelt quote, doesn’t have a singular idea, but a big checkbook. “I make no apologies for being a capitalist, and that motivation is not a bad thing,” said technology mogul Michael Dell, one of the group’s major financiers. Others include an heir to the Subway fortune and an owner of the Boston Celtics.
The problem is that, over the decades, many drug discoveries have not only originated at colleges and universities, but have also generated profit, which has helped fill their coffers. The University of Pennsylvania, for example, said it made hundreds of millions of dollars from research into mRNA vaccines used against Covid. Under this model, any profits would remain private.
The Arena has been operating in stealth mode since early fall, before turmoil between Israel and Hamas erupted on neighboring campuses. But the motivation behind it, according to researchers who have moved to the new lab, is becoming increasingly acute as the reputation of higher education institutions erodes. They say they are frustrated by the slow pace and administrative problems of their former employers, as well as what a new hire, J. Keith Joung, described as an “atrocious” salary at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he worked before Arena. “Leaving academia to work in industry was once considered a failure. Now, the model has reversed,” said Joung, a pathologist who helped design Crispr, a gene editing tool.
The motivation behind Arena has scientific, financial and even emotional components. Its early backers began discussing the idea at a mansion in Austin, Texas, in late 2021, where Dell, James W. Breyer, an early Facebook investor, and Celtics owner Stephen Pagliuca, vented about the incessant requests of money from college fundraisers.
Pagliuca had donated hundreds of millions of dollars to his home universities, Duke and Harvard, much of it dedicated to the scientific field. This guaranteed him a seat on four advisory boards at the institutions, but he began to realize that he had no concrete idea of what all that money had produced, other than his name on some plaques outside several university buildings.
In the following months, these early supporters rallied behind Thomas Cahill. venture capitalist and Boston doctor to come up with a plan. He said he would help find frustrated academics willing to give up their hard-earned university tenure, as well as scientists at companies like Pfizer, in exchange for a generous share of the profits from any drugs they discover. Arena’s billionaire supporters will keep 30 percent, with the rest going to scientists and general expenses.
Of course, science for profit is nothing new; the $1.5 trillion pharmaceutical industry is proof of this. Entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in startups trying to extend human life, and many pharmaceutical companies have recruited talent from universities.
A considerable portion of medicines originates from government or university subsidies, or a combination of both. From 2010 to 2016, each of the 210 new drugs approved by the FDA, the US federal agency responsible for food and drug control, was linked to research funded by the National Institute of Health, according to the scientific journal “PNAS”. A 2019 study by a former dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, claimed that most “new discoveries” in biology and disease came from academia.
This system has been bringing advantages for a long time. Often aided by their nonprofit status, universities have an almost limitless supply of low-paid assistants to help scientists with early-stage research. Innovative medicines, including penicillin, were born from this model.
The problem, according to scientists and researchers, is that there is usually a wait of years for institutional approvals from universities to move forward with promising research. The process, which aims to filter unrealistic proposals and ensure safety, usually involves writing long essays that can consume more than half of some scientists’ time. By the time funding is granted, the initial idea is often already obsolete, triggering a new cycle of grant requests for projects that will certainly be out of date in time.
Stuart Schreiber, a longtime Harvard-affiliated researcher who left the institution to become Arena’s lead scientist, said his most innovative ideas rarely received support. “It got to a point where I realized the only way to get funding was to apply to study something that had already been done,” he commented. The prestige of Schreiber – who is a pioneering chemical biologist in areas such as DNA testing – helped attract around a hundred researchers to the Arena. Harvard declined to comment on his departure and those of others he attracted.
An atmosphere of calculated secrecy has surrounded Arena operations. Joung, who resigned from Massachusetts General Hospital last year, said he did not tell his colleagues where he was going and that several asked if he had a serious illness. Cahill said several scientists he hired had their university email access quickly disabled and received severe legal threats of retaliation if they tried to recruit former colleagues — a common phenomenon in the business world but considered a punishment in academia.
The five billionaires backing Arena include Michael Chambers, an industrial mogul and the richest man in North Dakota, and Elisabeth DeLuca, widow of one of the founders of the Subway chain. They each invested US$100 million and expect to double or triple their investment in later rounds.
Schreiber said it will take years — and billions of dollars in additional funding — for the team to figure out whether their model will lead to the production of valuable medicines. “Will it be better or worse? I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”
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