Business


Everything: How New Ideas Emerge’ (Harper, 2016), Matt Ridley provides stunning perspective on innovation, it is as compelling as controversial, as authoritative as ambitious. So, the question we have to ask is who actually


drives innovation: the public or private sector? For more than a half century, it has been an article of faith that basic science would not get funded if the government did not do it, and economic growth would not happen if science did not get funded by the taxpayer. It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but the hard truth is that government funding of basic science was necessary because it is cheaper to copy than to do original research. Then, there are those who think there is less need for government to fund science because industry will eventually do this itself, having made innovations, it will then pay for further innovation. In reality, intellectual property rights through


issued patents dampen innovation. The original rationale for granting patents was to encourage inventors to share their inventions, not just to reward inventors with monopoly profits. A certain amount of intellectual property law is plainly nec- essary to achieve this. But it has gone too far. Most patents are now as much about defending monopoly and deterring rivals as about sharing ideas. And that discourages innovation! However hard and bitter it may be, the pharmaceutical industry needs to consider following the example set by Elon Musk… for society’s sake. Science drives technology, often resulting in


patentable inventions. Invention leads to innova- tion. Both scenarios are inherently and fundamen- tally intertwined. For the betterment of humanity, it is imperative upon us, the guardians, to see that science-driven inventions ultimately lead to tech- nology-based innovations1. While biotechnological advances, genomics and


high-throughput screenings or combinatorial and asymmetric syntheses have long promised new vis- tas in drug discovery, the pharmaceutical industry is facing a serious innovation deficit. The costs of drug development have escalated, the number of drug withdrawals has increased to historic highs and the transition from bench to bedside has been long and arduous2. There are many reasons for this unsustainable


business model. Most importantly, none of the pharmaceutical companies openly share the rea- sons for the failure of their clinical candidates in real time to effectively navigate the ‘industry’ from committing the same mistakes. It is time for the pharmaceutical industry to embrace, metaphorical- ly-speaking, a community-driven ‘Wikipedia’ or


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‘Waze’-type shared-knowledge, openly-accessible innovation model to harvest data and create a crowd-sourced path towards a safer and faster road to the discovery and development of life-sav- ing medicines. Pharma ought to give serious con- sideration to such a game-changing concept1.


Breakthrough innovations at the drug discovery front It may seem at times that we are losing the battle against many of the diseases that inflict humanity; in reality, we have made great strides. We now live longer, with a life expectancy that has almost dou- bled over the last 150 years. Improvements in nutrition, sanitation and housing, combined with advancements in public health, including the use of prophylactic vaccines and antibiotics, have eradi- cated deadly diseases that claimed millions of lives across the globe. However, with changing lifestyles, new diseases are emerging, age-associat- ed co-morbidities are increasing and many old dis- eases still remain incurable. There are ~36 million deaths worldwide attributable to non-communica- ble diseases3. Our knowledge of disease modalities is expand-


ing. Over the last decade researchers, primarily academia and supported by public funds, have identified more than one thousand new biological changes that could translate to new targets or biomarkers of disease and its progression. Genome-wide association studies have uncovered a multitude of gene variants that may be contribut- ing to complex diseases, such as schizophrenia, coronary


artery disease


and diabetes.


Unfortunately, the translation of many of these dis- coveries into therapeutics has not been realised. Limitations in capacity, funding and even culture in an industrial setting make the selection of the best new therapeutic targets from the overwhelm- ingly-large list unlikely3.


Altruistic role for pharma The pharma industry can help stimulate break- through on the discovery front. What if pharma’s in-house facilities could become available for aca- demic entrepreneurs, small biotechs or other spin- off’s looking for ‘ready set-up’ labs and just want- ing access to equipment and bench space, at cost? Tax breaks to the company could allow for this. Perhaps the more significant benefit is if the insti- tution’s programmes being shut-down, abandoned or placed on the shelf could be viewed by small biotech and academic labs for the potential of gain- ing access in order to complement programmes/ research already on-going in their not so cutting-


Drug Discovery World Spring 2018


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