ideasIdea
A precompetitive consortium for the twenty hardest cancer targets
No single company will spend a decade on a target that might be impossible. A shared, openly published effort across the twenty hardest targets spreads that risk.
The Structural Genomics Consortium showed that open chemical probes, published without patent restrictions, accelerate whole fields. The proposal is an oncology equivalent focused on the undruggable list (MYC, mutant p53, non-G12C RAS, fusion transcription factors, phosphatases), with pooled funding from several companies and funders, mandatory open data, milestone-based go/no-go, and freedom to operate for downstream drug development.
Hypothesis
A ten-year consortium produces validated chemical probes for at least five of twenty designated undruggable targets, and probe availability measurably increases the number of independent publications and programmes on those targets.
Rationale
The economics of individually funded undruggable programmes are unattractive because failure is likely and the science is generalisable; pooling makes the expected value positive for each contributor.
What would test it
A five-year pilot with three targets and four funders, benchmarked against matched targets developed conventionally on probe delivery, publication count and downstream programme starts.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
philanthropy
Cost to try
Large (over $50M)
Years to first evidence
10
Bottlenecks it attacks
- The undruggable drivers · The proteins that drive most cancers, such as MYC, mutant p53 and most RAS variants, still have no good drug.
- Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration · Companies with complementary drugs rarely test them together, and data that could answer questions stays locked up.
- Funding follows fashion, not burden · Money goes to the cancers and questions that are easy or popular, not the ones that kill most or where a dollar would do most.