I would point out that big pharma were clearly making big bets...

I would point out that big pharma were clearly making big bets on RNAi as a foundation platform technology. This trend has been reversed.

I would suggest that they are now making targeted therapeutic investments.

The burden of taking a discovery to IND is now with the biotechs.

Of course the situation is not completely black and white. I recall the recent French pharma investing large in Alnylam.

Do big pharma always get it right? Hardly.

Your Arrowhead point is doubly reinforced by the fact that big pharma ignored the monoclonal antibody technology - leaving the field to the biotechs.

Modern biologics feels very similar to mAB. Phylogica is a case in point - we have had a very productive and fertile field left completely to ourselves.

Will big pharma wake up? Problably not, but at least we can gets some deals to further perfect our foundation technology, along the way.