American entrepreneur Robert Duggan made an investment, six years ago, into a drug company called Pharmacyclics because it had a promising brain cancer drug called Xcytrin. Millions of dollars later the bullet proved not to be magic.
However the company had another experiment, Imbruvica which was, unexpectedly, highly effective against certain leukemias. In 2010 the company shares soared, it partnered Johnson & Johnson, and Duggan became a billionaire.
In the world of big pharma, drugs cost billions to develop and test, and a high percentage of them just quietly fade away. What is unusual is the stroke of luck that saved this investor.
Many of our most prolific drugs started off as gambles and now the contest is ever more intense.
Currently the most hunted holy grail is the cure for Alzheimer's disease. Perhaps the driver is the legion of baby boomers who see the scourge looming before them and - as they always have done - they are determined to be the ones to beat it.
In the past 20 years scores of drugs have been developed but failed to pass the critical tests. Just this year two very promising candidates fell at the testing hurdles. But there's no doubt that riches await the company that delivers at least some answers.
In Australia we're used to our researchers being among the leaders in major pharmaceutical and surgical developments. For many years the CSIRO and universities have generated ground-breaking results.
Dementia is a strong area of research with economic benefits that even the government's Commission of Audit should be able to see. Unless some answers are quickly found, in ten years the number of dementia sufferers will rise from 330,000 today to over 400,000. Aged care spending will rise to become the third biggest expense on our hard to control health budget. We will have no choice but to provide the necessary care, there's no alternative - unless we find cures, and soon.
Science research and development are not ivory tower academic exercises. They play a very real role in this country's survival and growth as a prosperous nation. Every prime minister over the past 50 years has coined the phrase (or its variant) "The Clever Country". Yet finding the funds has always been hard. Somehow the science budget is always an early target. Now we don't even have a science minister.
But for a country that is watching its motor industry packing its bags, and its miners hunkering down for a length period of diminishing resources prices, we need to grow very smart, very quickly.
Surely the nation that gave the world WI-Fi, plastic money, and Aerogard - all hatched in the CSIRO nest - can come up with plenty of answers.
With the Budget just days away, the whole science community is tense with expectation. In fact a message came from a 60 year old flying saucer in Canberra: The Australian Academy of Science.
Our professors warned that, "The science and research sector has already been severely hampered by spending cuts over the past two years," then added, "Any further cuts will irreparably harm Australia’s capacity to produce the science and research needed to drive responsible economic growth."
They then called for a commitment to developing a 10-year investment framework for science, research and innovation. "So we can keep pace with our international competitors and nearest neighbours."
We've done very well as the lucky country, now it's time to put our money on the clever country.
