Objectives: We examined the nature of the contribution of public and private organisations to the financing of biomedical research. Methods: A bibliometric analysis was undertaken on manually extracted and coded data from publications authored by the founding scientists of 121 drug originator companies launched between 1996 and 2016 in UK. Pipeline details were retrieved from the GlobalData Pharma Intelligence Centre’s database and matched with the founders’ identities obtained from the research provider Beauhurst and companies’ websites. Two methods of literature search were applied to identify the most influential publications made by the founders before the incorporation according to the companies’ science and number of citations. Results: Out of 774 publications, 63% reported funding information. Of these, 79% acknowledged the contribution of public institutions and 22% of private entities or a combination of both sectors. Privately funded research was skewed towards fewer and applied topics such as oncology and pharmacology (50%), whereas public organisations gave major support to biochemistry, molecular and cell biology research (43%). A small number of major organisations (13 out of 71) supported more than half of the publications and the majority of funders (66%) were external to the organisations undertaking the research. In 64% of the publications private or mixed support was found when at least one author was affiliated with a private corporation. Public funders were mostly based in the UK (37%) whereas US corporations were the most reported among the private sector (50%). Conclusions: The support of public organisations was widely acknowledged in the research made by the founding scientists of biotechnology companies in UK; privates’ contribution was mostly evidenced through co-authorships.