Bench Press

A few weeks ago, we posted a number of reasons why we believe the Pharmaceutical industry needs to pursue greater openness to accelerate innovation and reduce the cost and time of drug development. A few weeks after that, almost as if by magic, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline made a very encouraging announcement which is hopefully a first step in the direction of openness and a promising boost to global health initiatives around the world working on Malaria:

GSK has screened its pharmaceutical compound library of more than 2 million molecules for any that may inhibit the malaria parasite P.falciparum, the deadliest form of malaria, which is found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. This exercise took five scientists a year to complete, and has yielded more than 13,500 compounds that could lead to the development of new and innovative treatments for malaria, which kills at least one million children every year in Africa.

GSK will make these findings, including the chemical structures and associated assay data, freely available to the public via leading scientific websites. The release of these data will mark the first time that a pharmaceutical company has made public the structures of so many of its compounds in the hope that they could lead to new medicines for malaria.

Building upon its commitments to create a “knowledge pool” for neglected tropical diseases, GSK
today announced that governance of the “knowledge pool” will be taken over by an independent third party, BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH). GSK and BVGH have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Emory Institute for Drug Discovery (EIDD) to join the pool and further open up knowledge, chemical libraries, and other assets in the search for new medicines for neglected tropical diseases. A second collaboration has also been established with South Africa firm iThemba Pharmaceuticals. This work will help research and discovery into new medicines to treat tuberculosis.

In addition to opening up its library of malaria hits to the public and creating a third-party administered “knowledge pool”, GSK is even promising to give 60 scientists access to its advanced facilities in Spain and a funding pool of $8 million to help fund malaria research.

While GSK is reaping (well-deserved) kudo’s for this, we believe (perhaps, more correctly, hope) that GSK is also using this to figure out if greater openness can help their underlying business and how best to do it. As a Nature editorial on the subject opines:

The move advances the pharmaceutical industry’s slow but steady shift towards more open sharing of data. At least for early-stage, precompetitive research, drug companies are finding it useful to lower the firewalls around their intellectual property and pool their resources. Making data public brings fresh eyes and minds to the problem, and has the potential to accelerate the discovery process.

Let’s hope this marks the beginning of a very productive move towards greater information sharing.

(GSK Press Release) (Image credit) (Nature editorial)