Slashdot Mirror
Glaxo Open Sources Malaria Drug Search Data
smellsofbikes writes "GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company, is putting thousands of possible malaria-treating drugs into the public domain in a move that the Wall Street Journal calls a 'Linux approach' to pharmaceutical screening. Andrew Witty, who is described as the boss of GSK, says the company thinks it is 'imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations but by exceeding them.' Of course, synthesis or discovery of new chemicals is cheap compared to efficacy and qualification studies, but this is a refreshing change from not handing out any information until after everything is patented."
I hope, sincerely, that this is the start of more collaborative efforts on the part of drug companies. We're quick to bash them but I believe we should applaud this effort.
Oh to be a fly on the wall when RMS reads that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This is old news in the pharmaceutical world. The general consensus is that this is only a PR stunt and doesn't really offer much at all. They're not offering the compounds as little bottles of powders, but only as pictures of the molecules. Don't be impressed.
'imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations but by exceeding them.
If you want to earn the trust of society, you should just do the right thing.
Explicitly stating that you want to earn the trust of the society is something you do in front of the shareholders, not publicly.
We already know you want our trust, and we already know what you'll do with it if you ever get it back.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
_ how much data is released about the drugs? (it's one thing to say this drug is made of this, another to release all necessary information)
_ what drugs are released (is it really the most up to date stuff or is it the drugs that didn't work 15 years ago and are about to go in the public domain anyway)
warren buffet said, "behind every business decision... the good reason, what convinces everybody (we want to save the world), and the real reason (like we need a pr stunt).
if the real intent is common good... awesome, kudos to them.
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
These a drugs that only poor tribal people really need. If it were research for something like a cancer drug (ie bought by rich westerners), then their moral high ground would quickly vanish.
It's Kline, not Klein.
Well, I would suspect that some of these chemicals/drugs could be effective against Malaria.
However GSK have looked at the large number of tests they would have to conduct, the price the potential buyers could afford to pay, and decided that it isn't worth their or any other pharma company's time as they wouldn't make their money back.
Thus they release them for the goodwill instead.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Let's hope they get lots of good feedback, so, they will get the message not "everything" has to be closed-sourced.
This might be a good first incentive of another sector opening up in business.
It might be a PR stunt, but if this goes right, common people will see there are other possibilities; making it less feasable for this sector to force the impossible in the future...
I think all research for the 5 or 10 most common diseases should be open-sourced towards the world, for all to anticipate in such research.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Maybe less shrooms would give you a better perspective. The data is more likely that not very sound, if it were useless then this pr stunt, Granted I have very little trust in the pharmaceutical industry, but this is also a disease that would provide very little profit compared to other research. What it seems like is they are looking for a way to reduce research costs. Reduced research costs means greater access to a drug that could save millions, in money and lives, to an area of the world that can afford very little. I, for one am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, hopefully it will drive the rest of the industry to follow. Imagine if research costs were driven down by disributed research. Hell I might be able to afford health insurance someday, though probably not in my limited lifetime.
BTW, fix your sig, it's quantum not quantom.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Hasn't Google and multiple other companies shown that there very well may be profit in a positive pro-people (as opposed to the more common system of pro-greed) concept. I wholeheartedly hope that this type of approach to branding, marketing or public relations gains more wide spread usage.
Lets face it, we as human beings want the good guys to win. If a company can express a certain goodness in nature, i have no doubt; and happily so, since this might be an interesting possibility for capitalistic economic systems, that they will realize the possible value of brand loyalty.
Of course you have to ask yourself, what if politicians took such an approach... that is, honesty.
A lot of drugs can be cheaply created, even by developing countries if they have the correct formulation. The problem is, in order to get aid, most countries sign "treaties" saying they will "respect" western patents in exchange for free money.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Given that most of the places where Malaria is a problem dont generally have populations with the money to afford expensive drugs and dont generally have much respect for western IP law, they probably decided that it wasnt worth the effort to commercialize a drug that most of the target market wouldn't be able to afford (or would be able to obtain through cheaper generics made by companies who dont respect western patents)
The drug companies usually sell them near cost in the countries, while pushing for non-profits in the US to buy doses at over-priced levels to send to the country so they can be seen as both "doing the right thing" selling for lower price there, while still making a profit in the same market.
But this sounds more like a situation where they said "there are a bunch of drugs that look like they may help, but we don't know, getting them through trials is too hard for the payback, and since we'd just throw them away, we'll give them away and claim the value at $1,000,0000,000,000 on our tax returns while claiming we are 'doing the right thing' even though it didn't cost us anything (the actual cash donation that accompanying the drug donation being treated separately)."
Oh, and what slashdot moderation is appropriate for wrong? Someone posts 2+2=3, you either post a correction, wiping out any moderation in that thread and leaving the factually incorrect post at a higher moderation, of you mod them -1 something because of a factual error. So what -1 mod would you pick, or would you argue that no factually incorrect post should ever be modded down?
Learn to love Alaska
Drug leads are cheap compared to developing a drug. A friend worked at a drug lead company. They got bought by a big pharma. Within 2 years they had produced more drug leads than the pharma could validate in the next decade. So the pharma sold off the company.
Glaxco is no doubt saturated with drug leads too. According to Merk is takes about 400 million dollars to walk one drug all the way through clinical trials. So there's a perpetual winnowing process at every stage with plenty of candidates to step in when an advanced compound is eliminated from further study.
If you sell your drug lead company who do you think buys it? the competition. SO it's not like open sourcing something gives your competition something they could not get otherwise.
Instead it just makes everything more efficient. The only reason for them to sit on those compounds would be if they simply wanted to prevent other from making them out of fear they might compete with their own,but having no intention of perusing them. Which would be pretty shitty business. It does happen of course (Monsanto is often accused of this.).
So Glaxo is being brave and doing the right thing. But it's not costing them anything except possibly competition if one of those abandoned leads turns out to be the one.
Now here' the twist:
Ironically, by opening it up they maybe doing more to supress this compound than if they had kept quiet. The reason is, it's now unpatentable. What other company would invest in it?
Thus short of government development of these. opening it up kills it's further development more effectively than saying nothing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes the "cheaper generics made by companies who dont respect western patents" is bad news for the average US intergenerational investors- your "trustafarian".
With all the poor parts of the world declaring medical emergencies and selling western pharma for cents in the $.
Sadly some make real cash and become creative. Like doing real trials and finding new drugs.
Some brands take new pharma to the US as legal FDA approved IP protected drugs.
If only the senator from Disney could fix the ~ 12 year generic patent issue and block the UN from allowing local manufacture.
Charity and donations would be better, trust funds protected and profit reducing competition avoided.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yes anyone can 'programme' a med for many parasitic diseases.
But as with a 'wintel' like closed hardware deal, your not going to get anything done until you pay for the MS offer plus hardware.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/full/nature09107.html The paper was already published last week in Nature. There was another paper by Guiguemde and Kip Guy in the same issue that my lab helped with. The problem is that antimalarial drugs need to be affordable for millions of people to take daily in places where people live off less than $1/day. Things like Coartem and even artemisinin combination pills cost too much for most of the countries that need them, due to patents and safe manufacturing facilities or even just raw materials. Luckily, malaria is getting special recognition and that helps a lot with widely dispensing every tool available to combat the parasite.
Just seeing a non-geek publication use that term makes me tingle.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I'm taking it with a big grain of salt. The article only said that Glaxo would publish information of chemical compounds that have potential to act against the parasite that causes malaria , it didn't say that those are real final drugs that a third-world pharmaceutical factory can take to produce tablets. As anyone in the drug research would know (I'm only a programmer), in order to discover a cure, researchers generate thousands, or even millions, of chemical compounds to study. The majority of them are not useful for anything. They are not publishing information about confirmed hits.
The other thing I'm questioning is the patents. It just said the patents are waived for studying, it didn't say about manufacturing and marketing. What if one of the compound published turned out to be a hit, and Glaxo had patented it. Can others still use it without royalties? What about the IP of any derivatives?
Still a lot of questions to be answered.
I agree, we should take the facts and be thankful.
Oh thank you sir. I'm so greatful sir. Only sir do you think sir that you might find it in your heart sir to not lock up my own genome sir? I was hoping that we who share the genome sir would be able to use it to fight disease sir along with all those other drugs sir that you filed for first sir but you see sir if you lock it up sir many of us will die sir. May I lick your boot now sir?
But seriously, WHY should I be thankful to companies who are behaving badly and manipulating the law so as to maximise their own profits despite the death and suffering it causes, just because they released some small subset of the data? Are you mad? If I am mugged and beaten up should I be thankful that my attacker only laid the boot in 4 times instead of 5?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If a drug company is going to open source any type of data, it makes sense to open the most likely to be profitless in the future. With the Bill and Melinda Foundation targeting Malaria as strongly as they are with the intention of giving the vaccination (and possibly cures) away for free, it's really only a matter of time before either the market for the Malaria drugs are worth nothing at all or GSK finds themselves in a 20 year long patent dispute with Bill who has plenty of experience fighting these things.
I'm pretty sure that even if the Gates' family is doing everything more or less for free, they're almost certainly rapidly developing a huge IP pool to use as leverage against companies like GSK in case they find themselves being sued.
On top of that, Malaria related medications are generally targeted at 3rd world countries who depend on WHO and other "charitable government organizations" to wheel and deal to provide the drugs to them. The prices are rapidly driven down and then Indian pharmaceutical companies counterfeit the medications making them worth even less under the "We'd love to buy them from you the legitimate developers of the drug, but at those prices, we might just have to go with the India produced alternative, so take what we're offering or thank you for your time".
GSK could probably give away tons of their cures and save themselves the related headaches under these circumstances just to gain favorable press and have a little more leverage in Washington since they are "no longer evil... see?"
Stuff like that makes me choose a brand when buying things.
Now if whoever bought the company that wanted to free the drugs against the sleeping illness from any IP (which, in turn, bought the company that wanted to free the drugs against the sleeping illness from any IP) would go through with it, a pill that has _no_ economic value to a large megacorp but could be manufactured locally and cure millions of people who are de facto in a coma...