Sharing Pharmaceutical Research

Examples

"Now former executives from companies including Merck and Genentech are pushing to open up many stages of drug development, from basic science to human research, in the hopes of ending this drought.

At Sage Bionetworks in Seattle, former Merck vice-president Stephen Friend is trying to pool data from drug companies and academics to create predictive models of the body's chemistry. Merck has signed up for one project, and Pfizer for another, with both of them providing data to the effort. Two years after the collaborations begin, the companies will make their data available through Sage's database. The idea is that sharing data in this way will lead to a better understanding of biology, and to better drugs.

Friend says that companies will continue to keep their individual drug compounds secret, because they can still invent medicines faster than their rivals. But in biological research, he argues, there is increasing evidence of "the absurdity of how data is not shared." He adds: "It's not just industry, it's academia. If patients ever came to an understanding of how people do not share data in academia, they would revolt."

GlaxoSmithKline is opening up its libraries of chemical compounds to fight malaria. It is allowing outside researchers access to its technology, intellectual property and chemical libraries in the hopes of creating anti-malarial drugs. If a use were to turn up outside malaria, Glaxo would keep the rights.

In cancer, drugs may increasingly have to be studied in tandem, or in combination. M.D. Anderson Cancer Center looked at four different lung cancer drugs being developed by separate companies: AstraZeneca, Roche, Onyx Pharmaceuticals and Eisai. The idea was to use blood tests to try and predict which patients would respond to which drug. Early results were promising. Until now, it was unusual for so many yet to be marketed medicines to be tested together in one study.

A similar effort is occurring at the University of California, San Francisco, where researchers are studying four different experimental drugs in a study of 800 women. They are using specially designed blood tests to try and pick the right drug for the right patient and prevent bad decisions.

"All companies today are concerned with the sustainability with the way we've done research and development over the years. We hear it everywhere," says Susan Desmond-Hellmann, a former Genentech executive who is now UCSF's chancellor. "The question is can you give up the secret nature that is your competitive advantage because you gain so much participating in a process like this?" (http://blogs.forbes.com/sciencebiz/2010/06/is-secrecy-hurting-drug-research/)