PRECOMPETITIVE COLLABORATIONS IN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 58

company's money funds is unlikely to be more successful than it has in the
past. New ways of working with the intellectual input, expertise, and resources
of both sides being valued should have a better chance of creating innovative
medicines through increasing effi ciency and better harnessing of emerging
scientifi c knowledge.
The public sector can also provide an impetus for change. Over the past
decade there has also been a realization by governments and funding agencies
that the failure of the industry to address some of the most serious health care
challenges such as the diseases of old age (e.g., dementia, cardiovascular
disease) will have serious economic consequences for society both in the
developed and the developing world. Therefore governments and agencies
have, in different ways, sought to encourage the precompetitive agenda.
Examples include the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) in Europe, the
Critical Path Institute (CPI) in the United States, and precompetitive funding
[e.g., The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) http://www.thesgc.com] by
organizations such as the Wellcome Trust [5 - 7] .
Another driver that is not often explicitly mentioned is that of transparency.
The industry needs to build confi dence and trust with a variety of stakeholders,
including the general public. Precompetitive consortia, if publicized appropri-
ately, can do much to enable dialogue with patients, regulators, and others,
which should lead to increased understanding and communication as well as
increased trust [5] .

4.2 EXAMPLES OF PRECOMPETITIVE CONSORTIA

Many different models exist for precompetitive consortia and a number of
consortia exist (see the Appendix). Two established consortia are described
below, but a number of recent initiatives have been announced in both the
developed and the developing world. In February 2010 Lilly, Merck, and Pfi zer
announced that they would share data, through an independent organization,
the Asian Cancer Research Group, on pharmacogenetic data related to lung
and gastric cancers. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) set up a patent pool in 2009 to
facilitate access to intellectual property (IP), industrial expertise, and tech-
nologies to stimulate research into neglected tropical diseases. This pool was
joined by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and administered by BIO Ventures for
Global Health. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and South Africa's
Technology Innovation Agency joined the initiative, now known as the Pool
for Open Innovation against Neglected Tropical Diseases, in 2010. In order to
support researchers, GSK also set up laboratories for their use at its research
center in Tres Cantos, Spain. More recently the data from screens for inhibitors
of Plasmodium falciparum , the protozoa that is responsible for malaria, were
put into the public domain [8-10].
The two initiatives described below are both public-private partnerships
(PPPs) where industry is collaborating precompetitively. They differ in scale,