The Swiss drug giant, Novartis, announced that it will make information, about which of the 20,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project are likely to be associated with diabetes, available over the Internet. Fortune has the story here.
While the main motivator can't necessarily be attributed to the company's support of open processes and business practices, the sheer task of the effort makes the opening of the information most feasible. In this case more eyes is definitely a bonus especially when compared to the prospect of keeping a tight lid on the information but having to stay strictly in-house with the task at hand.
For those who keep up with big Pharma, it's common knowledge that collaboration isn't a new thing except for the fact that this time you don't have to be a billion dollar drug company to participate. Obviously, no single approach is going to magically produce and bring forth a cure/competent treatment, to market overnight. However, it is going to be interesting to see what value opening the playing field to a wider variety of participants will have on the progress made over the long haul.
Still, there's an underlying sentiment that without the option of patenting the raw genetic information, a great deal of incentive to do this difficult work has been removed. More than likely, it is going to take a strong balance between open & closed, community & profit similar to how things are taking shape within the open source industry to bring forth the best for all parties involved. Hopefully, this is a step in that direction.
It's too bad there aren't more details on the terms, if any, associated with this information. It'll be interesting to see "who" (i.e. university or government researchers) really uses this information.
Posted by: Savio Rodrigues | February 13, 2007 at 01:01 PM
Savio,
I agree, more details on the process behind this "open information sharing" would be more than helpful in determining its viability. Hopefully, as time progresses more will be made public so the results of this effort won't silently become irrelevant.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Fletcher | February 14, 2007 at 03:09 PM
I think it is important that recognized companies such as Novartis make public knowledge such as the research of diabetes in the human genome over the Internet since it is of interest because of the general topic of health
Posted by: Without Prescription | May 19, 2009 at 10:01 AM