Need for new IP approaches to facilitate collaborative (academic-industrial) drug development.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: FitzGerald, Garret A.
• Date: 01 January 2014

The relative strengths and weakness of academia and industry in the skills necessary to bring a molecule forward to an approved drug are widely appreciated. Indeed, the efficiency of moving to a modular approach to drug discovery and development--with modules drawn at different stages from diverse sectors and geographies--has been realized in the altruistic sector. However, conversion of this approach to the for-profit sector requires a revision of our thinking on intellectual property (IP).

The potential value of too many molecules remains locked in company freezers, while exploitation of biological insights in academia is classically limited by the lack of tool compounds and of translational infrastructure to convert such leads into approved drugs. Segregating these...