The Emergence of Crowdsourcing and Open-Source Models in Drug Development

Sammanfattning: Contemporary cases of crowdsourcing (CS) and open source development (OS) related to drug development have been selected and studied. Contemporary examples of CS/OS from within and outside of the pharmaceutical industries have been presented to give a background and suggest possible benefits and problems. The main criteria for selection have been that the case must seek to advance drug development and must use crowdsourcing or open source as a mechanism. The cases found in our search show a large diversity in terms of application, usage, and possible implications for the pharmaceutical industry. We found that crowdsourcing within a scientific problem context produced good results, but that open source initiatives were either poorly financed and not successful or focused on neglected diseases made possible through strong backing by non-profit organizations. An analysis of which the pharmaceutical companies where that showed activity on the platforms identified R&D-intensive and biotech companies as the most active. Contract research organizations (CROs) and generics manufacturers (GMs) showed almost complete absence. We argue that GMs are not likely to be interested in this kind of R&D, but CROs are an untapped resource. Finally we propose a hypothetical model that takes into account all the findings from our study and the literature. This model is based on a limited type of open source with a limited number of partners making use of the untapped CRO resource through crowdsourcing.