The progress of medicine, if seen from the perspective of the last decades, is evident both in its facets of alleviating human suffering and in offering treatments that were unthinkable a few years ago. This progress has only been made possible by the collective effort of researchers staff . Behind every success story lie many other stories of failure and endless hours of sacrifice in tracking, finding, invention and development.

Medical research is expensive. The cost of instrumentation, reagents, animal models and qualified staff grows as the level of evidence required in experiments and the progress of biotechnology becomes progressively more sophisticated.

The source main source of economic resources is, and should be, public funding paid for by our taxes. We citizens have every right to demand that the most interesting research projects are selected and adequately funded and that the most talented and productive scientists are prioritized according to objective criteria. We must also demand that those in power increase the level of investment in research and development applied to medicine because, if properly oriented, it is an investment and not expense. It should be emphasized that biomedical research is the main hope for extending and improving the quality of our life or at least that of our dearest descendants.

What is the private sector doing in all this? One day cycling among the government buildings in Washington DC, I read a slogan on one of their facades: "The patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of ingenuity". Pharmaceutical companies take considerable risk in the development of new drugs and medical instrumentation with the prospect of a profit that does not happen in all cases. Compared to research academia, companies often adapt faster to progress and better prioritize productivity in an environment of skill fierce. Industry often seeks alliances and collaborations with academic researchers in both the finding and test field phases of new treatments and prototypes. Alliances between industry and academia should be favored and encouraged by governments, but with special care in the control of subsidies, so that they really translate into knowledge and wealth.

Private capital also promotes research in a philanthropic and interest-free way. I am not only talking about foundations of large fortunes, but also about organizations that channel donations from the middle classes to charitable entities of sufficient size to provide decisive support to a scientific center or to a scientific area . These organizations, which often operate at the supranational level, play an excellent role, with efficiency in the management, with objective criteria and great farsightedness. In many prestigious academic institutions there are fundraising Departments whose mission statement is to communicate to potential donors the activities that require financial support and the results of the contribution once produced. In the Anglo-Saxon culture it is very common that part of the fundraising activities consist of charity galas, dinners, concerts, sporting events and other activities with public affluence in which artists, sportsmen or famous people contribute with their image and good work.

Dedicated as I am to cancer immunotherapy, I have witnessed the rapid adaptation of private initiative in many countries to a field in a phase of revolutionary progress due to its excellent results. Thus, in advanced Western countries, industrial investment and philanthropic funding have converged with enviable agility and speed in the face of the rapid progress of immunotherapy research.

Research is knowledge and it should also be about converting knowledge into wealth for all, transforming discoveries into products and services for society. An antibiotic or a new antitumor product is knowledge encapsulated, it is nothing else. Experience shows that the strong growth of some countries has always been preceded by an improvement in technological innovation as a result of research.

Taxation policy plays a key role in those environments that wish to move forward with the support of patronage and research at research and development. In Spain, where there is still a long-standing distrust of philanthropic donations for the benefit of research -also in other fields, such as art-, tax relief would be of considerable benefit to us towards an openness comparable to the policies of other countries.

This article intends to praise private-sector funding at research biomedical and encourage its growth. At the frontier of expense and investment, we need private capital, which ultimately represents the effort, freedom and wealth of civil society.