Research on the bleeding money edge

Here is an article from the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review about a lawsuit by a privately owned biotech in Seattle, Onconome, against Dr. Robert H. Getzenberg of Johns-Hopkins and U of Pittsburgh.

Getzenberg and Pittsburgh U hold patents for some cancer-related biomarkers stemming from Getzenbergs research. Onconome was funded to commercialize this finding and Getzenberg was the CSO of this company until 2008.

The lawsuit claims that Getzenberg made the whole thing up and the biomarkers never worked.

So yet another scientific fraud, maybe, but it brings up a good question: How do you find a balance between taking a wait-and-see approach on things, but risk that somebody else gets in early and reaps the rewards, versus get in early on some scientific discovery, with the risk that there might be some nasty surprises.

It doesn't have to be fraud, there are plenty of things where VC funds, biotechs, and pharma routinely spend a lot of money on things that do not stand up to the initial high expectations, aka hype (the human genome comes to mind). Some of these things do come back once the expectations are adjusted and turn out to be useful.

What I find mildly funny about the lawsuit is that Onconome is suing U of Pittsburgh for "failing to properly supervise Getzenberg's research". Never mind that Getzenberg worked for 7 years or so for Onconome and produced scientific results showing imaginary progress on commercializing the biomarkers, apparently without proper supervision as well.