---
id: "concept-traditional-amc-model"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["¶2", "§ Past Successes"]
tags: ["business-models", "legacy-systems", "r-and-d"]
related: ["concept-amc-innovators-dilemma", "claim-traditional-funding-insufficient", "prereq-drug-pipeline", "prereq-tech-transfer"]
definition: "A legacy pharmaceutical R&D paradigm where academic medical centers focus on basic science and early-stage discovery, relying on external pharma companies for late-stage clinical development."
sources: ["tail2"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail2"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-tail-131-medical-drug-discovery"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/04/u-s-medical-centers-need-a-new-model-for-drug-discovery-and-development"
sourceTitle: "U.S. Medical Centers Need a New Model for Drug Discovery and Development"
---
# Traditional AMC Innovation Model

For over **50 years**, U.S. **academic medical centers (AMCs)** have run on a distinctive innovation model anchored by a *tripartite mission*: **medical education, scientific research, and patient care**. In this paradigm, patient care inspires basic-research questions, public investment (notably **NIH grants**) funds early-stage discovery, and **public–private partnerships** translate those discoveries into clinical practice.

The model has been historically dominant — the authors credit it with generating **over half of the patents behind FDA-approved drugs**, including **statins, targeted cancer therapies, and mRNA vaccines**. But it structurally confines AMCs to **basic and early-stage translational research**, handing **late-stage clinical development and commercialization** entirely to external pharmaceutical companies. That handoff is the exact seam the article attacks — see [[concept-amc-innovators-dilemma]] and [[claim-traditional-funding-insufficient]].

**Enrichment caveat:** the "over half of FDA-approved-drug patents" framing is directionally consistent with the literature on academic drug discovery, but this *specific quantitative claim* is not established by the enrichment sources and would need a dedicated patent-study citation. Treat the direction (AMCs are a major upstream source of approved therapies) as solid; treat the exact fraction as unverified.

Assumed background: [[prereq-drug-pipeline]] and [[prereq-tech-transfer]]. The contrarian reframing of this model appears in [[contrarian-amcs-as-pharma]].