Emerging life science companies always need money. Some seek non-dilutive money through research grants, government programs and the like. Others deal with angels and seed round and Round A investors.

Another source of possible funding, often over-looked, can be afforded through major drug and pharmaceutical companies. For example:

Johnson & Johnson has opened a facility in Cambridge (the geography is of course no surprise), which has a large investment fund, as well as access to incubator space (the space is at market rate).

Roche, similarly in Cambridge, has several programs; one is an investment arm but there are a couple of programs for fundamentally innovative technologies which are still primarily rooted in academia; they are willing, without equity claim, to support promising science on behalf of scientists still embedded in an academic setting.

The large and privately-held pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has programs in Cambridge not only for investment but also for counselling companies and investors seeking to navigate working with larger pharmas.

Of course each company has its preferred technological targets, so approaches must be tailored. However, given the huge shift in emphasis away from drug development and internal innovation, to reliance on outside innovation, it is logical for these larger companies to nurture the external ecosystem. For example, at J&J in 2002 external drug development accounted for 20% of new products while in 2012 (last reporting year) it accounted for 50%; the statistics for the top ten pharmas are 16% and 33% respectively; at Roche 35% of all sales are based upon externally developed products.