Pharma has a lot more resource and they will do lots more testing before they try and see if the drug modifies disease..
They go from A-Z and it costs loads of money.
However, academics do not often concern themselves with actual drugs but are more interested in the mechanism and the 'proof of principle' result. So rather than going A-Z, they start at P and accept that the drug may not make the development process, but one can go back and fill in the dots and cross the t's if something is interesting. The beasties are part of the team.
CoI: We are founders/shareholders of the Company developing this drug