How does this conflict with the original comment's point?

Every major pharmaceutical drug I know of (including mRNA vaccines see Pfizer) is based on publicly-financed (NIH) research done at public univesities and transferred to the private sector under Bayh-Dole exclusive licensing regimes.

Now, would a university academic overseer be pleased to find their chemisty professors doing 'open-source drug discovery', or focusing on alternative uses of old drugs that cannot be patented (say, cannabis extracts as pain medications competing with new patented opiate derivatives)?

I don't see how anyone can honestly argue that the profit motive isn't seriously skewing (and limiting) the kinds of academic research being done in US universities today.

This may be a problem, but it is not a problem at the level of the university IME. Universities are happy with any research that brings in a good amount of grant money. Sure it is gravy when they can make money on something like CRISPR, but the vast majority of labs will never make money on their results, and tenure track decisions don't appear to be made based on potential for those kind of pipe dreams, at least anywhere I've been. Universities want PIs that can regularly rake in money via grant proposals.

In the biological sciences the vast majority of grant money is coming from the government. The NIH could very easily push open source drug discovery by changing the way some grants are allocated, without any other change to existing policies.

I also think industry influence on research will always be a double edged sword. Yes there are important research topics that would be understudied in a purely profit-driven system. But there is also a big lack of accountability in a purely "academic" system. Industry forces replication in a way academia never can, for the topics it does tackle.