It's smart for these companies with huge cash positions to let all the small companies (and their investors) take all the risk. If some small company tries to develop a drug, and it doesn't work, they take the loss. If a small company develops something that does work, the big company can come in and get a licensing deal or buy it outright, for less money than it would have taken to try to develop several drugs that failed, and the one that worked.

We've seen all these big pharmas have big failures -- Merck has had a couple of high-profile ones recently. The other companies might decide to follow Pfizer's lead in the search for novel drugs, while continuing to develop their own me-too drugs that are trying to improve on existing drugs.

This kind of environment is ideal for IPIX, with its novel drugs and clinical trial successes.