The source that wikipedia cites says the following:
"However, research on DRACOs has entered the well-known “Valley of Death” in which a lack of funding prevents DRACOs, and many other promising new drugs, from being developed and advancing toward human medical trials. To progress DRACOs research it needs to be demonstrated against clinically relevant viruses (i.e; HSV). To that end an IndieGoGo campaign (http://igg.me/at/EndTheVirus) was started on October 13, 2015."
They don't seem to elaborate on what the hell they mean by the valley of death.
Basically there is funding for early research, and for drugs that are really close to release, but the years in between (the drudgery) aren't very interesting to investors so capital is hard to come by to keep projects alive.
An acquaintance is $600m into a new type of Malaria testing and his funding is slowing, but is frustrated because he feels he is closer then ever. Frankly im amazed he got this far, thats a lot of burn.
Basically funding for drug research is all screwy!
Flexible funding allows one to keep the proceeds even if the goal is not met in the allotted time. Kickstarter offers only an all-or-nothing payout for projects (unless something changed the last time I checked).
