There aren't a lot of diseases where we can point to and say we have an answer today that we didn't have a decade ago.

On the commercial side, clearly all of the three major types of companies -- traditional pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies and medical device companies -- view health and medicine as a growing market,

[Still,] the doubling over a decade of total spending by U.S. public and private research sponsors in real, inflation-adjusted terms should be reassuring to those who fear that financial sponsorship for research is not paralleling scientific opportunity, ... It is also reassuring that spending on health and biomedical science research by companies and government is not following reductions in research and development in other industries or reduced support for other areas of science.

We've seen growth and a real doubling of funding in all sectors. The proportions are really unchanged over the decade, with roughly 60 percent coming from industry and the remainder coming from government and foundations.

For all sponsors, the challenge is patience. Biomedical research is an inherently high risk and lengthy process,

It raises the question ... are we getting our money's worth? Are we capturing the full value of that significant investment?