We were struck in two ways by the surge of interest in GlaxoSmithKline’s recent publication of malaria drug screening data on CDD (see our earlier post for details). First, it’s clear that public data sharing invigorates the entire drug discovery ecosystem. Second, we have been inspired by the outpour of goodwill by scientists wishing to help.

Because we have the technology to let researchers share data for free via CDD Public, we’ve decided that’s exactly what we’re going to do: provide free CDD access to researchers interested in archiving and publishing all their data for the greater good of the community.

With the barriers to precompetitive data sharing coming down, it is our wish to continue to receive and publish new data sets useful both to our client base and to the scientific community at large.

If you want to join the revolution and share data with the larger community, email us at:

publish@collaborativedrug.com

What would make a publicly traded large Pharma company open up their treasure chest of internal well protected secret screening data and make them available to the world? “Ha! – Nothing!” or “Never!”, you might say…

Well – buckle up – the world of Drug Discovery has officially changed today, May 19th 2010. GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, did just that: Screened 2 million compounds, found more than 13,500 with activity inhibiting the Malaria parasite. And instead of trying to continue on the beaten (Drug Discovery)-path and make a new drug at GSK for sale – they published those active compounds with their data to the whole world, sharing a wealth of research IP. WOW!

We here at CDD are tremendously proud to be part of this historical event but also truly delighted as this touches onto our key mission: To help accelerate specifically the discovery of new, effective and affordable drugs to fight diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis and the like, neglected diseases. Neglected they are typically because corporations prefer to focus their resources on making shareholders happy by selling what rich markets buy. Nonetheless – those neglected diseases are killing millions of people, many of them children every year in terrible ways while effective, affordable treatments are badly needed but commercially unattractive to go after (I personally think quite passionately that treatments here are so much more needed than for “lifestyle ailments” of the rich markets).

So – historically this step is an almost evolutionary leap in thinking about the intersection of economic markets and humanitarian needs. Also – not just because a large Pharma company is sharing their treasure to help in a non-commercial way to fight one of the worst diseases on the planet but also because this may be the dawning of an entirely new paradigm on how to find new drugs: By involving the global research communities, harnessing the power of millions of scientists and labs with their expertise, intelligence, creativity. This is crowd-sourcing at its finest.

This is the seed – water, nutrients, and sun are welcome from all of you.

Read more about this historic event in the Wall Street Journal.

BioConference Live is a Free online-only event focused on the Life Science and Biotech community – bringing together researchers, thought leaders, and professionals from around the world. As the event is hosted live over the internet, this conference requires no travel. You can register here and login to attend June 2nd-3rd, 2010.
 
There will be over 50 Live keynote and track presentations, including a talk by our very own CEO Barry Bunin, PhD.  Other speakers include David Wolf M.D. NASA Astronaut and Medical Doctor, Steven Burrill CEO of Burrill & Company, Kevin Hrusovsky M.B.A. CEO of Caliper Life Sciences, and Dr. Paul Schoemaker, Ph.D. Chairman and CEO Decision Strategies International, Inc., The Wharton School.

• The cost of developing and supporting traditional technologies (especially outside of the cloud where they must be deployed, updated, supported- and then re-deployed, re-updated, and re-supported), naturally creates strain on the limited numbers of buyers and sellers in this niche market. The merger of two “giants” complicates this strain, from legacy technology integration through to license and contractual management.
• And yet, to maintain leverage, and not be played off each other as commonly happens with savvy buyers, there is some immediate benefit to the merged parties given the negotiating strength that comes with size.
• Unfortunately, both for big pharma mergers and technology company mergers, the perceived or actual efficiencies carry significant corporate challenges (both for customers and suppliers).
• This is a potential boon for companies like CDD (and others), both because of the great, experienced talent which may (or already has) become available. Mergers mix up the status quo, opening up new opportunities for those nimble enough to fill in the changing market niche.
• Post-merger challenges are often greater than the actual merger itself. The “devil is in the details” and only time will tell. The incumbents have mature technologies and many advantages that come with a captive client base.

That said, during the period of integration and uncertainty it is a wonderful opportunity for buyers and sellers to explore and consider new technologies and services. Our hypothesis over the past 6 years is that a technology built in the cloud from day one inherently has a number of advantages. These include a faster rate of innovation, lower cost of delivery and support, and lower total cost of ownership. Also, an inherently collaborative platform is a better way to securely share data between projects and organizations – and comes with a constantly growing community of collaborative researchers rapidly co-evolving with software and data.

In short, it is an exciting and challenging time for the merging partners. But for the marketplace, it opens up opportunities for the open-minded customers and vendors. We welcome the churn!

For more information, read the full press release about Andrea coming on board here.

A recent WHO report indicated that approximately 1.8 M people died from TB in 2008, while multi-drug resistance was on the rise.  The Stop TB Partnership has set a goal to halve TB prevalence and deaths by 2015 (compared to 1990).

The Financial Times has posted a series of video interviews today on the subject of combating TB.

Early stage preclinical TB research continues as we have seen with the many groups CDD is currently supporting.

These are the biggest challenges we see for this research community:

1. Availability of funding for continued drug discovery screening initiatives.
2. Coordination of activities to prevent groups from covering the same ground (e.g. which compounds have been tested  under what conditions, etc.)
3. Drug discovery expertise to take a hit to a lead, and then to the clinic and keep the pipeline flowing.
4. Engagement of big pharma to help – Access to ADME/Tox models and tools to rapidly evaluate compound quality as early as possible in the pipeline.
5. Increase efficiency of drug discovery process using rational design and learn from data already produced.

We hope to see advances in these areas over the next year, and CDD is committed to help the TB and neglected disease community make it happen!