Jay Bradner Wants to Change Biomedical Research Forever

"Bradner, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a discovery chemist, is advocating a new movement in the world of pharmaceuticals and drug discovery: sharing results to form an open-source approach to medical research, borrowing a term from computer scientists who share their data and programs....Five years ago, Bradner and his colleagues decided they wanted to speed up information flow instead. After constructing a molecule that they believed could target the base protein of a rare form of cancer, Bradner and his colleagues did something virtually unheard of: They shared the molecule with other labs interested in studying it. Then, when further research proved promising, instead of keeping the results secret, they published a paper detailing the identity of the molecule and how to make it—and included an email address interested labs could contact to get free molecules for study. The response was overwhelming...."