I think, in fact, that what's needed is to create structures, along the lines of what the National Research Council of Canada has done, that are at the junction of university research and the pharmaceutical industry. That would make them independent of the ups and downs of the marketplace, to which the pharmaceutical and contract research companies are subject. These structures would also be publicly funded, with a view to developing technologies based on discoveries at universities or research institutes and moving them to an initial clinical study phase with human subjects.
For the federal government, it would be money well spent.