Grants4Targets: an open innovation initiative to foster drug discovery collaborations

Collaborations between academic institutions and the pharmaceutical industry are increasingly being pursued in the hope that these relationships could help to tackle the challenge of improving research and development (R&D) productivity in industry (How to improve R&D productivity: the pharmaceutical industry’s grand challenge. Nature Rev. Drug. Discov. 9, 203–214 (2010))1, as well as enable academic institutions to better exploit the translational potential of their research. Although there are a growing number of examples of industry collaborating closely with a major academic partner, approaches that exploit the expertise of a larger scientific community, using the internet as a platform, have been more limited. Such an open-innovation model is known as crowd sourcing2 and has successfully been used in other sectors for decades. However, crowd-sourcing initiatives in drug discovery are still in their infancy, and whether they have a substantial impact has yet to be proven3. Nevertheless, an initial evaluation of the impact of InnoCentive, the first open innovation initiative in drug discovery, introduced by Eli Lilly in 2001, was promising4. Five years ago, Bayer HealthCare launched a novel crowd-sourcing initiative called Grants4Targets (G4T). With this initiative we aimed to combine expertise from academic researchers and researchers in the pharmaceutical industry to identify and validate novel drug targets and biomarkers. Here, we provide an update on our experiences with this programme, results generated and successes achieved, as well as feedback from both the grant receivers and our in-house scientists acting as reviewers and caretakers. Status and process Since May 2009, researchers from all over the world can apply online via the G4T webpage for a grant supporting a research project for up to 12 months in research areas that are of strategic interest to Bayer HealthCare. Key information regarding focus areas, conditions, criteria and so on are provided on the webpage. The background of the initiative, process and initial results have been reported previously in 2011 (REF. 5). Briefly, after receipt of the application, a rapid first-line evaluation is performed, and applications meeting the general criteria progress to scientific review. Final decisions are made by a grant committee. The whole review process mirrors that of a scientific journal and so uses slightly adapted software (ScholarOne ManuscriptsTM by Thomson Reuters Inc., UK). The response time is less than 2 months after the biannual submission deadlines (that is, March 31 and August 31) There are two types of one-year grant: support grants (€5,000–10,000) and focus grants (€10,000–125,000), and intellectual property always remains with the applicant. Afterwards, promising projects might be pursued by separate collaboration agreements.