The anti-intellectual effects of intellectual property

Intellectual property considerations decrease research productivity in subtle and unanticipated ways. Chemical probe exchange between Pharma and academia is hindered by academic IP interests. These are perceived as a subtle nuisance by the academic researcher. Novel ligands for oral targets are historically few and numbers of economically attractive oral drug targets are limited. Economically speculative targets lie in the academic domain but the medicinal chemistry to explore these in a drug discovery sense lies in Pharma and cooperation between the two is hindered by very different academic and Pharma views on chemical quality. Tools and probes for academic target validation can accommodate looser chemical quality criteria as opposed to the very strict chemical quality criteria required in Pharma drug discovery.

Introduction

Currently, there is a shortage of new tools at the stages of both drug discovery and clinical development. For the latter, a recent FDA critical path document [1] states:

“Not enough applied scientific work has been done to create new tools to get fundamentally better answers about how the safety and effectiveness of new products can be demonstrated, in faster time frames, with more certainty, and at lower costs.”

I propose that the problem at the development stage has some of its origins at a far earlier stage. Specifically, problems start at the earliest discovery stages where there is a commonly held opinion that the vast resources of academic biology have been insufficiently assisted by the testing of chemical tools and probes to interrogate biological pathways. The NIH Roadmap Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network and associated Molecular Library Repository of screening compounds exemplify important efforts to address this deficit [2]. The anti-intellectual effects of intellectual property (IP) considerations are the topics broadly covered by this commentary. Too often, this type of topic is treated as if it were only a technical, legal or factual issue and the very important effects of people's attitudes are ignored. This commentary deals with some of the softer, people issues. Hence, it is unapologetically subjective and very much an opinion piece by this author.