CANCER COMMONS: BIOMEDICINE IN THE INTERNET AGE - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 168

hubs that advertise relevant services. By tightly integrating knowledge,
decisions, and action, the personalized virtual biotech methodology can accel-
erate the research cycle, driving it on behalf of particular patents' disease,
focusing resources on the most promising opportunities and minimizing redun-
dant work.
To be clear, personalized virtual biotech is a methodology . That is, it is a
particular way of employing the services and technologies provided by the
Web-based platform that operates Cancer Commons, not a set of tools sepa-
rate from that platform. This methodology also creates a novel economic
model for drug discovery and development. It can reposition drugs that worked
for other cancers or diseases or that failed to demonstrate effi cacy against their
original indication, or it can develop new molecules. However, because it is
not usually practical to develop a new molecule for a novel target on the
timescale of an individual patient, the most common case is likely to be the
off-label use of drugs or new combinations of existing therapies. Physicians do
both of these routinely in practice, but the results of these N - of - 1 experiments
are seldom disseminated.
Beyond off-label and combinational use of approved or investigational
drugs, there are the many potential drugs languishing on the shelves of pharma
companies as a result of failed trials for particular indications, or those many
hundreds that showed some activity in the target indication, but not enough
to be worthwhile for the company to pursue them. Collaborative Drug
Development (CDD), for example, has spearheaded the effort to get pharma-
ceutical developers to open some of these libraries for use in diseases of low
profi tability but large worldwide impact, such as malaria (Chapter 21). Finally,
beyond existing treatment combinations and orphan pharma libraries there
are the many promising treatments being studied in academic laboratories
with no path to market through the traditional channels. The traditional path
for academics to translate their research into therapies is either to start a
biotech company or license their intellectual property (IP) to an existing
company. Unfortunately, the costs of a startup are high ($5million-80million)
and the odds of success dismal. Moreover, potential licensees of IP require
extensive validation data that are hard to generate in an academic setting. As
a result, many promising treatments are left languishing in the so-called Valley
of Death between the academic laboratory and the clinic. Personalized virtual
biotech offers a radically different approach, driven directly by the needs and
fi nancial resources of patients. This approach leverages research collaborations
that academics are used to but provides them with previously unavailable
technical services, access to highly motivated patients for small-scale clinical
studies, and potentially novel funding sources such as Internet fundraising
campaigns. Moreover, the products of personalized virtual biotech are rapidly
disseminated through Cancer Commons to all patients who might potentially
benefi t from them.
The Cancer Commons platform enables multiple personalized virtual bio-
techs working on the same or related diseases to collaborate and share data,