The precompetitive space: time to move the yardsticks.

Area of Science:

• Drug Discovery and Development
• Translational Medicine
• Public-Private Partnerships

Background:

• Modern therapeutics discovery faces significant scientific and organizational challenges.
• Collaboration between diverse stakeholders is crucial for advancing drug development.
• Existing models may not adequately address the complexities of early-stage therapeutic validation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a public-private partnership focused on overcoming therapeutics discovery hurdles.
• To initiate a collaborative effort for validating novel therapeutic targets.
• To accelerate the generation of proof of clinical mechanism (POCM) for selected diseases.

Main Methods:

• Convening key stakeholders including industry, government, patient groups, funders, and academia.
• Focusing on the precompetitive space to address shared challenges.
• Selecting "pioneer" disease targets for focused investigation.

Main Results:

• Formation of a public-private partnership to advance therapeutics discovery.
• A strategic plan to generate proof of clinical mechanism (POCM) for "pioneer" diseases.
• Commitment to achieving two positive POCM results per year.

Conclusions:

• The established partnership provides a framework for collaborative therapeutics discovery.
• Focusing on POCM in the precompetitive space can de-risk early-stage drug development.
• The initiative aims to streamline the translation of scientific concepts into clinical validation.