Cancer Drug Research Given a Boost by Involving the Crowd
To speed up the search for drug cancer therapeutics, AstraZeneca wants to harness the wisdom of the crowd to find new cancer drug cocktails.
The pharmaceutical behemoth is releasing colossal amounts of preclinical data from more than 50 of its medicines. According to the company, this public release of information is on an unprecedented scale.
The data includes approximately 11,500 combinations that have been tested for their ability to destroy cancer cell lines from different types of tumor, including those of the lungs and colon. This will be paired with genomic information provided by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
Combining cancer therapies may offer one of the best ways to tackle the disease, and potentially change the way cancer is treated. Researchers say that the potency of drug combinations means that tumors are less likely to develop resistance to treatments.
Data and Drug Research
The release is part of AstraZeneca’s DREAM Challenge, an open innovation initiative involving researchers, universities and pharmaceutical companies to develop new ways of using data to benefit drug research.
Participants who come up with winning predictions for the best new cancer drug combinations will have their work submitted to the Nature Biotechnology journal for publication.
Susan Galbraith, Head of the Oncology Innovative Medicines Unit at AstraZeneca, said: “This open innovation research initiative complements our own efforts brilliantly and we are delighted that the findings could be published for the benefit of the global scientific community.”
What Open Innovation Can Do
AstraZeneca’s new approach is a further demonstration of how some in the pharmaceutical industry are reaching out to non-traditional sources to help them create life-saving therapeutics. The move is also seen as a way of countering rising operational costs and enrich depleted pipelines.
Reader Comments
I am a 6 year cancer surviver. I turned down chemo and radiation. and opted for cannabis. They tell me I am cancer free. I know many people with terminal cancers that have used the same treatment that are cancer free now. So what is the big deal.
Cancer is just an inconvenience like the common cold.
Posted by Gerald Hansen on September 30, 2015
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