The valley of death between research and market

The valley of death is the gap between a promising research result and a product that pays its own way. A UK parliamentary committee placed it, in 2013, between a working prototype and the first income from sales.

In biomedicine, the same image describes the distance between the laboratory bench and the patient. However, the phrase also has its critics, who argue that it makes innovation look like a single straight road.

What the valley of death describes

The committee in question is the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Specifically, chapter 2 of its report applies the phrase to a business, often a technology-based one, with a working prototype. That prototype works, but it is not yet ready to earn money from customers.

Until it is, the company needs enough money to keep developing it. In the report's account, that need lasts until sales to customers let the company become self-sufficient and grow.

The report adds that technology companies often have to spend heavily before they can show they could turn a profit. Without patient investors, it warns, they may close, or have to sell cheaply before reaching their potential.

The report's summary also frames the idea more broadly, opening with these words: "There exists the concept of a valley of death that prevents the progress of science from the laboratory bench to the point where it provides the basis of a commercially successful business or product."

The valley of death in biomedicine

Attila Seyhan's 2019 article in Translational Medicine Communications takes the biomedical view. It describes a rift between basic research at the bench and clinical research and patients at the bedside. In Seyhan's words, "this rift is widening and getting deeper".

Seyhan writes that academia and industry both widely recognise a crisis of translation, that is, of turning laboratory findings into human applications and potential treatments or biomarkers. Although both have tried to mitigate it, high attrition rates in drug development remain, in Seyhan's account, a fact. The difficulty of reproducing preclinical findings and translating them to human applications also remains.

The article locates translational research between basic scientific research and clinical research. That is where, in its words, "promising discoveries meet their demise". This so-called translational gap, it adds, "has come to be called by many the 'Valley of Death'". In addition, the pharmaceutical industry uses the phrase for the path from basic science to research in humans. In the article, that stretch spans the phases of research labelled T0 to T2.

What Seyhan sees as the causes

The article names a set of culprits in translational research.

• Poor hypotheses and irreproducible data.
• Ambiguous preclinical models and statistical errors.
• The influence of organisational structures, and a lack of incentives in the academic setting.
• Governmental funding mechanisms, and the clinical relevance of basic research.
• Insufficient transparency, and a lack of data sharing in research.

For Seyhan, translational research aims to give discoveries that reach human trials the best chance of proving safe and effective. The article also argues for closer working across sectors. In particular, for translational research to operate more effectively, academia, government and the community should engage with industry. That means both the financing and the operational sides of industry, in biotech and in large pharma. Its suggestions further include open innovation models, entrepreneurship, transparency and decision-making.

Why some question the valley of death

Not every witness to the committee accepted the image. Some argued that it made people picture innovation as a straight line, with money a problem at only one point.

The University of Manchester, for example, was uneasy with the phrase. To its mind, the phrase implies that only a single stage needs crossing. In its view, rather, "successful innovation is an interactive process", in which commercialisation plans have to work at every stage, sometimes several at once.

Similarly, written evidence from the Government noted that relatively little innovation reaches the market in that linear way. Instead, the Government pointed to another main route for knowledge from the research base: "collaborative and contract research, consultancy, and the provision of professional training".

The committee itself set the valley within a wider system. In its words, "The four resources essential for economic activity are knowledge, finance, services and people." For the committee, the challenge for policy is an environment where existing businesses and new ones can reach all four.

Crossing the valley of death from the university side

The committee also had concerns about how universities engage with turning research into business. Among other points, it wanted to see whether the sector needed more proof-of-concept funding. At the same time, it was concerned that pushing an innovation agenda too hard through universities could bring diminishing returns. In its view, that could also damage academic research that is working well.

Richnovex works with universities, research groups and technology transfer offices to take research outputs to market, as its work with academia sets out. One provider handles strategy, design, setup, testing and handover, so the research team does not manage separate contractors, vendors or step-by-step implementation.

One gap, seen from two sides

The committee placed the valley of death between a working prototype and the sales that sustain a business. Seyhan placed it between the bench and the bedside. Even so, both describe a stretch where good results stall. For the committee, the valley sits within a wider system of knowledge, finance, services and people. Seyhan, likewise, looks to academia, government, the community and industry working together.

Sources

1. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Bridging the valley of death: improving the commercialisation of research, Eighth Report of Session 2012-13 (2013): HC 348, summary; HC 348, chapter 2
2. Seyhan AA, Lost in translation: the valley of death across preclinical and clinical divide, Translational Medicine Communications 4, article 18 (2019): doi.org/10.1186/s41231-019-0050-7