A pre-competitive consortium to validate or kill academic targets before licensing
Companies and public funders would jointly pay for standardised experiments that confirm or refute new cancer targets, sharing all results openly, so nobody wastes years on a target that does not hold up.
A consortium modelled on the NIH Accelerating Medicines Partnership and Open Targets in which companies, funders and academic centres pool money to run standardised, blinded target validation (genetic dependency across large cell panels, in vivo knock-out in relevant models, human genetic and expression evidence, tool-compound pharmacology) on nominated academic oncology targets, with all data released publicly. Companies then compete downstream on chemistry and biology. This raises the quality of what enters the valley and removes duplicated validation efforts inside every company.
- The valley of death between lab and product · Most academic discoveries die before anyone tests them in people because nobody funds the middle step.
- Preclinical results do not reproduce · Fewer than half of landmark cancer biology findings reproduce when someone else tries.
- Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration · Companies with complementary drugs rarely test them together, and data that could answer questions stays locked up.
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not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaAn independent replication institute that re-tests key preclinical cancer findings before trials
Shares Patient-derived xenografts, Preclinical results do not reproduce, The valley of death between lab and product.
- InstitutionThe Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center
Shares Patient-derived xenografts, CRISPR functional genomics, Preclinical results do not reproduce.
- IdeaMulti-centre randomised animal trials before committing to a human trial
Shares Patient-derived xenografts, Preclinical results do not reproduce, The valley of death between lab and product.
- IdeaMake in vivo metastasis screens a required step in drug discovery
Shares DepMap (Cancer Dependency Map), Patient-derived xenografts, CRISPR functional genomics.
- IdeaA funded organoid and PDX panel as the go/no-go gate before IND-enabling money
Shares Set aside 3% of grant budgets to replicate findings before translation, Patient-derived xenografts, The valley of death between lab and product.
- IdeaEvery drug screen includes standard reference compounds whose performance is published
Shares DepMap (Cancer Dependency Map), CRISPR functional genomics, Preclinical results do not reproduce.
- IdeaSelf-driving laboratories that run the cancer biology hypothesis loop autonomously
Shares CRISPR functional genomics, Preclinical results do not reproduce, The valley of death between lab and product.
- IdeaA universal material transfer agreement with a thirty-day default
Shares Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration, Patient-derived xenografts, Preclinical results do not reproduce.