Consortia are enabling drug discovery in areas that individual organizations are unable to support alone because of the high risk or the need to pool information. MDC’s Peter Simpson (Chief Scientific Officer) and Graeme Wilkinson (Head of Virtual R&D) discuss the desirable features that can underpin the success of such consortia for Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
“In the past 15 years, large pharma companies have transitioned from an internally focused research model to community-sourcing, collaborative approaches that are now increasingly driving innovation in drug discovery.
Consortia can tackle challenges in drug discovery that present too high a risk for individual organizations to undertake, and/or that require access to levels of information or resources that are beyond those of any individual organization. With many such consortia now active — ranging in scale from multiple groups that are part of the European Innovative Medicines Initiative to disease-specific collaborations catalysed by a single charity — there is both growing experience and interest in the factors that contribute to their success or failure.
Here, we discuss such factors for consortia focused on drug discovery.”
