[opensourcepharma] Some Reading Material

[Matthew Todd]

In the flurry of activity following the recent meeting, several things
arose I wanted to share, just to get us all started!

1) Interesting article from a few years back about the influence of patents
on pricing and access to medicines:
http://www2.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol6-2/palombi.asp

2) New article on crowdfunding early stage drug development in onology:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359644614002542?np=y

Featured here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/07/14/can-crowdfunding-jumpstart-early-stage-drug-research/

3) A new announcement by the MRC in the UK and 7 pharma companies that they
would share structures/details of compounds for repurposing, but only in
the UK and no suggestion of openness:

http://www.mrc.ac.uk/news-events/news/seven-pharma-companies-offer-up-compounds-to-uk-researchers/

Would be interesting if half the compounds were open, and we could see
which projects became the most productive, or reached the market.

4) I discovered an organisation interested in prion diseases and adopting
open science approaches: http://www.prionalliance.org/our-mission/ - based
in Boston.

5) A resource on repurposing: http://www.redo-project.org/

Finally: 6) An article that came out earlier this month entitled "The
Pharmaceutical Commons. Sharing and Exclusion in Global Health Drug
Development"

Location (toll access, I have a copy):
http://sth.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/07/11/0162243914542349

Abstract: "In the last decade, the organization of pharmaceutical research
on neglected tropical diseases has undergone transformative change. In a
context of perceived “market failure,” the development of new medicines is
increasingly handled by public-private partnerships. This shift toward
hybrid organizational models depends on a particular form of exchange: the
sharing of proprietary assets in general and of intellectual property
rights in particular. This article explores the paradoxical role of private
property in this new configuration of global health research and
development. Rather than a tool to block potential competitors, proprietary
assets function as a lever to attract others into risky collaborative
ventures; instead of demarcating public and private domains, the sharing of
property rights is used to increase the porosity of that boundary. This
reimagination of the value of property is connected to the peculiar
timescape of global health drug development, a promissory orientation to
the future that takes its clearest form in the centrality of “virtual”
business models and the proliferation of strategies of deferral. Drawing on
the anthropological literature on inalienable possessions, we reconsider
property’s traditional exclusionary role and discuss the possibility that
the new pharmaceutical “commons” proclaimed by contemporary global health
partnerships might be the precursor of future enclosures. "

...which is (I think) suggesting that open innovation strategies tend to
start open, and become closed as they progress. Quotes included from
PDPs/foundations to which some of us belong.

Best wishes all,

Mat


-- 
MATTHEW TODD | Associate Professor
School of Chemistry | Faculty of Science

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
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E matthew.todd at sydney.edu.au | W
http://sydney.edu.au/science/chemistry/research/todd.html | W
http://opensourcemalaria.org/

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