Analysis: Open-access R&D one answer to drug industry woes | Reuters

"In a bid to save both time and money, some of the [pharmaceutical] industry's biggest names are experimenting with new ways to pool early-stage research, effectively taking a leaf out of the "open-source" manual that gave the world Linux software. If it takes off, the approach could break the mold of current drug research and speed the development of tomorrow's life-saving medicines for diseases from cancer to autism. At the University of Oxford on Wednesday, two more companies -- Pfizer and Eli Lilly -- signed up for the first phase of the concept by joining existing backers GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis in an unusual public-private research partnership. As supporters of the international Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), the rivals give cash and scientific resources for work into the three-dimensional structure of proteins -- important for drug discovery -- even though all the findings are made available to scientists worldwide without restriction. In all, the SGC has secured $49 million in new funding. Next year, a far more ambitious scheme is slated to take cooperation to another level by promoting open-access, patent-free research right up to mid-stage "proof of concept" clinical trials, known as Phase II. The bold idea calls for drugmakers to trade exclusivity for the chance to get in on the ground floor of new therapies. After the initial sharing phase, companies could cash in by developing their own versions of any new medicines...."