Establishing a reliable framework for harnessing the creative power of the scientific crowd

Abstract

Discovering new medicines is difficult and increasingly expensive. The pharmaceutical industry has responded to this challenge by embracing open innovation to access external ideas. Historically, partnerships were usually bilateral, and the drug discovery process was shrouded in secrecy. This model is rapidly changing. With the advent of the Internet, drug discovery has become more decentralised, bottom-up, and scalable than ever before. The term open innovation is now accepted as just one of many terms that capture different but overlapping levels of openness in the drug discovery process. Many pharmaceutical companies recognise the advantages of revealing some proprietary information in the form of results, chemical tools, or unsolved problems in return for valuable insights and ideas. For example, such selective revealing can take the form of openly shared chemical tools to explore new biological mechanisms or by publicly admitting what is not known in the form of an open call. The essential ingredient for addressing these problems is access to the wider scientific crowd. The business of crowdsourcing, a form of outsourcing in which individuals or organisations solicit contributions from Internet users to obtain ideas or desired services, has grown significantly to fill this need and takes many forms today. Here, we posit that open-innovation approaches are more successful when they establish a reliable framework for converting creative ideas of the scientific crowd into practice with actionable plans.

The price of progress: Funding and financing Alzheimer's disease drug development

“…Crowd funding is another innovation using web-based means of raising funds. This has succeeded in generating small amounts of funding to inaugurate new drug development programs [87] , [88] . Crowd-sourcing of drug development problems is another innovation using motivational prizes to harness the creativity of web-connected individuals.…”

The pitfalls of crowdfunding Alzheimer's disease research

“…Other inter-and intraagency collaborations have separate funding mechanisms for Alzheimer's disease beyond NIH, including private equity, research organizations, not-for-profit advocacy and philanthropic organizations, academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and individual State funding sources [51]. New sources of funding are now being aimed at tapping public support through crowdfunding [55]. Alzheimer's disease research is already one of the top medical research concerns worldwide, and funding is slated to grow.…”

The argument against crowdfunding Alzheimer’s disease research

“…[52] New sources of funding are now being aimed at tapping public support through crowdfunding. [56] Sources of funding for Alzheimer's disease are similarly diverse in Europe. The United Kingdom has just funded a new initiative Dementia Discovery Fund with £250 million ($327 million) while the European Union funded three Alzheimer's Disease Research Platform projects from the Innovative Medicines Initiative with C138 million ($154 million).…”