His point was that the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration are increasingly able to handle preclinical and early clinical drug development, and that with these first steps taken medicines are more likely to be brought to market by large pharmaceutical companies.

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The high costs of drug development mean that most early investors no longer own big stakes by the time a medicine finally gets to market.

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The wave of new drug development in myeloma dates to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when researchers were scouring old treatments for one that might have an impact on the cancer.

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This more collaborative model is being applied to the high-risk innovative early stages of drug discovery, with companies taking on the highly expensive later stage development.

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In 2001, Johnson and Johnson, which had been BioCryst's partner in peramivir's early development, pulled out of the program, leaving BioCryst with exclusive rights to the drug's future profits, which could be substantial.

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It also has a drug that is being tested in late-stage clinical trials and another in the early stages of development.

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