Sage Commons

URL = http://sagecongress.org/WP/2011agenda/

Description

Luke Timmerman:

"The founding idea, at a nonprofit called Sage Bionetworks, was to spark an online movement like the one we’ve seen with open-source software or Wikipedia, in which thousands of loosely affiliated people around the world pool their brainpower to do something great. In this case, the wisdom of the crowd could improve drug development and personalize medicine.

The Sage Commons is built on the notion that the genomic symphony is too bewildering for any individual or team—even at a place with as many dollars and brainiacs as Merck—to figure out. That seems pretty obvious.

...

Sage has scooped up more than $20 million in support so far. It has built a team of 30 employees. Companies like Merck (NYSE: MRK), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN), and Quintiles have contributed some combination of money and data to the cause. Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing unit of the e-commerce giant, is hosting the massive amounts of genomic data that Sage wants to put in its public repository.

Some world-class scientists at Stanford University, Columbia University, UC San Francisco, and UC San Diego have agreed to pool their experimental genomic data. The FDA has become curious about how an open data repository could be used to track adverse events with drugs. Scientists from other disciplines, like physics and astronomy, have been vocal advocates for the benefits of openness, Friend says. And patient advocacy groups, including the Genetic Alliance and the CHDI Foundation, have championed the cause.

One of Friend’s next steps, once there’s enough data in the Sage Commons, is creating a free online scientific journal with the ability to visually display network models of disease that connect the dots between genes, proteins, and clinical manifestations of disease in ways that today’s journals aren’t equipped to handle." (http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/04/11/open-source-biology-deserves-a-shot/)