Last November biotech investors started to see a slew of news releases issued by firms who got $1 billion into biotech research and development in grants under the Therapeutic Discovery Tax Credit program which was enacted under President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Now, two lawmakers are proposing to revive the "one-time grant program" announced last year.
We were quite critical of the fund initiative, which saw many biotechs (almost as many as are publicly traded) apply and given funds from. We weren't the only ones who thougth that these grants were spread too thin. Given the news that this might be in play again, we continue to hope that these tax credits and grants are available to a more select group of companies when the feds start to hand out chunks of cash.
Some have pointed to the fact that Novavax (Nasdaq:NVAX), for example, got just a small portion of the funds more than Sequoia Pharmaceuticals got. The problem, you see, is that Sequoia's offices are vacant and their employees were all laid off not long after they got the funds. Some wonder where the $733,437 in federal grants and discovery funds went. Just three years ago, Sequoia was had plenty of cash from venture funds from big-name investors, a pipeline of promising HIV drugs and was a hot IPO candidate, but few would argue now that the money might have been better spent on any number of other cach-starved early-stage biotechs... Or would it?
To read the full, original article click on this link: The US Government needs to be a better biotech investor with tax payer money
