New Startup Hopes to Push Open Source Pharmaceuticals

waderoush writes "Nothing like the open source computing movement has ever caught fire in biology or pharmaceuticals, where intellectual property is king. But drawing inspiration from the people who make Linux software, and the social networking success of Facebook, Merck's cancer research leader has nailed down $5 million to launch a nonprofit biology platform called Sage, which aims to make it easier for researchers around the world to pool their data to make better drugs. 'We see this becoming like the Google of biological science. It will be such an informative platform, you won't be able to make decisions without it,' says Merck's Eric Schadt, a co-founder of Sage. He adds: 'We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.'"

Comments

University Open Research

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like when research was in the domain of the university, and when science was done by building on the prior work of others? The big dollar companies siphoned away the talent from universities and went patent crazy. They're the ones that started this in the first place.

The same can be said for internet technologies - people forget that fundamental web technologies such as web browsers and LDAP came out of university research, not out of the big companies or the major standards bodies.

Re:University Open Research

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Shhh! You're not supposed to talk about science and the sharing of knowledge! You see, these days it's all about Innovation(tm). Nobody's sure exactly what Innovation(tm) is, but we know it's heavily dependent on Intellectual Property(c) and it's vitally important that Intellectual Property(c) be Protected(r). How else are we going to synergistically leverage our core assets to maximize stakeholder value?

Oh, please.

[chill]

Next thing they'll be telling us is we could GROW our own medications in gardens. Medicine and pharmaceuticals are *hard* and require a lot of big government seed money, research, lobbyists, more money, more lobbyists, advertising, etc. The idea that you could grow, say a drug to suppress inter-ocular pressure in glaucoma patients, or a nausea-suppressive for chemotherapy patients is patently absurd! I mean, what next? Analgesics from tree bark?!

Hippie, commie, open-sourcers will never learn.

$5M won't even keep the lawyers on retainer...

[AliasMarlowe]

Intellectual property may be king, but the lawyers are queens (pardon the expression), and their games are hideously expensive. You can't get into the legit end of the drugs business without a strategy for covering legal liability. You should budget at least as much for this as for clinical trials or production facilities. $5M is peanuts in this game.