With the amount of money required to get a new drug onto the market, it is no wonder that the pharmaceutical industry has traditionally guarded its proprietary information with almost obsessive care. Just a decade ago the idea of sharing research ideas, trial results, process methods or supplier details was virtually unthinkable.
But slowly the gates of the fortress started to creak open. Innocentive encouraged scientists to post problems and potential solutions on the web, then several Big Pharma companies pledged to make their clinical trial results generally available.
Then Rx-360 and more recently EXCiPACT encouraged the sharing of audit information. And now from a trickle to a stream, the open access floodgates look set to pour forth a positive torrent of resources that have the potential to increase productivity and reduce the rate of attrition in the r&d sector.
Last month saw three separate initiatives that could revolutionise the drug discovery process. The European Lead Factory is an EU-wide public-private partnership that will consist of a high-throughput screening centre and a substance library with half a million drug candidates.
Then there are two new studies that will provide online open-access databases amounting to encyclopaedias of drug sensitivity, cataloguing how hundreds of different cancer cell lines respond to anticancer drugs, allowing patients to be treated with the most effective drug for their particular cancer.
Finally, the UK Biobank is now open for business. It contains data relating to the health and lifestyles of half a million people, including 26,000 already suffering from diabetes, 50,000 with joint disorders and 11,000 heart attack patients, and will chart changes in their health with the aim of opening the way to new treatments and preventative strategies.
At the moment it is hard to see how this wealth of information can be harnessed to achieve the greatest effect. But as with the traditional children’s puzzle, once you join up the dots in the right order a clear picture soon starts to emerge.