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.

Not "open source pharmaceuticals"

[Ungrounded Lightning]

When I saw the title I thought "How the HELL can you have 'open source pharmaceuticals' in a legal regime where new drug compounds are illegal by default?"

Then I read TFA.

This has NOTHING to do with making "open source pharmaceuticals". This is about sharing data among drug companies and doctors to try to get a better handle on things like:
  - understanding the gene-regulation changes that occur in major diseases
  - designing better drugs using this data
  - customizing drug therapies by selecting drugs that are a good match for a patient's genetics and disease, picking those that will be safe and effective for him in particular while avoiding those that would cause dangerous side-effects due to his particular genetics.

It looks like it will run afoul of HIPPA unless it's very carefully designed.

BAD article title. No donut.