COLLABORATIONS IN CHEMISTRY - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 96

5.6 WHERE WILL COLLABORATIVE
TECHNOLOGIES TAKE CHEMISTRY?
Improving effi ciency is necessary since squeezed budgets and costcutting in
both academia and industry are impacting pharma R&D. Collaborative soft-
ware for chemistry can help in several ways. First, sharing data or molecular
structures either openly or securely can enable a chemist in one location, say
in a drug company in the United States or Europe, to suggest a synthesis route
for a molecule being made in China, India, or Russia. Drug companies can tap
into the global chemistry community to work on problems that may be beyond
the capabilities of their own staff via collaboration networks such as
Innocentive. Alternatively, they can attract molecules or technologies to them
for potential testing via initiatives like PD 2 . Free Web - based databases of
molecules and their properties, patents, and reactions can reduce the depen-
dency on commercial databases as well as provide links to many other initia-
tives that such closed commercial systems cannot. Collaborative technologies
have the capability to facilitate virtual laboratories that can be located in
multiple locations while at the same time potentially bringing together differ-
ent disciplines like biologists and chemists. This may be ideal for neglected
diseases or rare orphan diseases in which there is either limited funding, sci-
entifi c capability, or scientifi c interest to have critical mass.
While there are signifi cant precompetitive informatics efforts in the phar-
maceutical industry [28] that cover both chemistry and biology, to date there
has not been a focus on creating standards or even setting requirements for
collaborative technologies that could be used between or within companies
and between companies and researchers or external contractors. There is
therefore signifi cant opportunity for collaborative technologies to expand and
impact chemistry in general from teaching [29-31] through to research and
development, and it is equally likely that success may come outside of bio-
medical fi elds.
REFERENCES
1. Sapienza AM , Stork D . Leading Biotechnology Alliances Right from the Start .
Hoboken, NJ .: Wiley , 2001 .
2. Oliver AL . Networks for Learning and Knowledge Creation in Biotechnology .
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2009 .
3. Clark MA , et al. More than just a slick website: The use of collaborative techno-
logy to solve organizational challenges in federal agencies. USDA Graduate
School executive potential program Team #1, 2009. Available: http://www.
collaborationproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/More_Than_Just_A_Slick_
Website.pdf .
4. Pikas CK . How and why physicists and chemists use blogs . Nat Precedings posted
8 May 2010 . Available: http://precedings.nature.com/documents/4429/version/1 .