"The top three therapeutic categories by far are cancer-related conditions (210 medicines), infectious diseases (50 medicines)"

Well here is a classic example of a market failure. Infectious Diseases kill far, far more then cancer, and yet there are more cancer drugs in the pipeline. And the growth of infectious diseases hasn't taken on the urgency that it should be our great leaders.

As someone who has designed nearly 300 million dollars of buildings for the pharma industry, I can say, that speaking with the scientists who are involved in these issues, they would much rather the funding priorities were different also.

One of my best experiences was working for a NFP (St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital) which developed drugs for these disease whose victims weren't so well-healed.

But the sad fact is, as good as one NFP is, it will take government action to create the markets for some of the most urgently needed drugs and vaccines.

For full details of many, many market failures in the Pharma sector, I would highly reccommend the excellent book Steal this Idea by Michael Perelman.