Potential effects of increased openness in pharma: the original knowledge behind new drugs

This study seeks to determine potential changes in the degree of openness in pharmaceutical R&D by investigating where the knowledge behind new molecular entities (NMEs) comes from in terms of type of organization, geography and time. We find that the organizations granted NMEs increasingly rely on external knowledge sources but that these are increasingly shared among NME grantees. Universities are the most important indirect knowledge contributor and their relative importance has increased with time. NME grantees are increasingly relying on knowledge from different countries and the age of the knowledge sources confirms that recent NMEs are mostly follow-on drugs. This work provides evidence of the increasing openness of pharma to new knowledge sources as a means to improving the drug discovery and development process.