All of us have known and witnessed Wikipedia as an excellent example of collaborative effort to accumulate the world’s knowledge in a re-usable format catering to even the most uneducated of its audience.
Consider a similar use-case in the Pharma industry, where the drug development costs are exorbitantly high to the tune of about a US$ 1 billion and above, often taking more than 10 years for a molecule to come from the lab to the patient. With phases of inconsistent investor interest/ confidence and also a pressing need for innovative therapies, it is important to bring out new novel molecules cheaply and quickly.
Additionally, against an extremely challenging backdrop of declining R&D productivity, a looming “patent cliff” in which more than US$ 150 billion worth branded drugs lose patent protection, industry consolidation – focusing even more on R&D has become an imperative. As Andrew Witty, CEO – Glaxo SmithKline says “The pharmaceutical industry needs to do more with less and still be innovative”. Such challenges could not be more apt for open collaborations between pharma companies, academia and niche specialist firms for rapid innovation. (The importance of alliances in my previous post – here)
Here are a couple of such examples which are successfully functioning and sustainable (?, Let’s see):
Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD)
In their own words “OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best minds can collaborate & collectively endeavor to solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Leshmaniasis, etc. It is a concept to collaboratively aggregate the biological and genetic information available to scientists in order to use it to hasten the discovery of drugs. This will provide a unique opportunity for scientists, doctors, technocrats, students and others with diverse expertise to work for a common cause”
Since its inception there are over 800 scientists across the world working on discovering novel therapies for Tuberculosis. Based on its business model, all these scientists are engaged in target identification, validation and screening to provide qualified leads. Post this phase, the OSDD involves the industry through Custom Research Organizations (CROs) to optimize candidate drug and proceed for clinical trials.
The organization has been able to identify a few qualified leads (hits) in a little over 2 years – something that would have taken a pharma company at least 5 years and a lot of money to accomplish.
More details about the organization here
This is another good example of industry academia collaboration in order to bring drugs quickly and cheaply to the market. The organization initially started off with a seed funding from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now able to sustain itself through drug sales.
The organization functions through two related but independent divisions MEND Biotech Development (MBD) maintains wet-lab expertise in Boston and Pretoria and performs activities like drug delivery system design, assaying, stability testing, formulation development etc. and MEND Innovation & Translational Alliance Management Division (MITAM) that manages partnerships between pharmaceutical scientists, academia both from developed and developing worlds in order to discover novel therapies and delivery systems.
By their own admission, this is what they say about themselves – “Medicine in Need is a not-for-profit research organization devoted to the successful development and manufacture of affordable and effective vaccines and therapies with characteristics that allow their widespread use despite the daunting economic and logistical constraints of the developing world”
(Cooperative is an interesting choice of word – more on this here)
This one is even more unique in the sense that it provides “personalized medicine” for breast cancer patients. It is an open-source biotechnology venture which operates in a not-for-profit basis.
As cost for gene sequencing has been drastically falling and immense computing power is now available at free or affordable cost (Google Exacycle), it would be theoretically possible to create personalize medicine and not declare bankrupcy!
An overview of this initiative is here
Of This & That 