Pharmaceutical research and development (R & D) is one of the best examples of human ingenuity, attracting vast funding and deploying the most advanced technologies. Over the past century, it has enabled unprecedented advances for human health. Yet the pharmaceutical R & D system is struggling to keep up with society’s medical needs. More and better medicines are desperately needed at a time of global ageing and expanding populations, with new challenges such as antibiotic resistance on the horizon and many tropical infectious diseases still in need of adequate pharmaceutical solutions.

A recent paper, ‘A New Pharmaceutical Commons: Transforming Drug Discovery ’, written by Professor Chas Bountra, Dr Wen Hwa Lee, and Dr Javier Lezaun, highlights the limits of traditional R&D models focussed on secrecy and the protection of Intellectual Property (IP) rights, and offers a set of recommendations for strengthening pre-competitive and open source practices that can accelerate the race for cures to the world’s most harmful diseases.

In this short video clip, Dr Lee & Dr Lezaun give a brief overview of what the paper aims to address whilst highlighting the importance of open science.