Open Source: The Future of Drugs

The Pharmaceutical industry faces a difficult challenge: It takes 10 to 15 years to develop a new drug, and it costs between $800M and $1,000M to do so. Very few compounds make it through the research pipeline to become products that can have a clinical impact. The time has come for bold ideas and disruptive technologies. In this case, to embrace the practices that Open Source communities have been used for many years.

The Science Translational Medicine Journal published this week a commentary about the recent Toronto Summit, where 43 research, pharma, funder and policy thought-leaders gathered on 16 February 2011 for a summit on pre-competitive disease biology and innovative strategies for drug discovery. The summit started with the concerning statistics that 90% of drug candidates are rejected before they get through Phase II Clinical Trials.

The goal was to explore the need and feasibility to create a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) that enables pre-competitive drug development spanning target identification to clinical proof of concept