It’s no secret that large pharmaceutical companies are shedding internal R&D staff, and turning towards in-licensing of promising molecules to bolster their early-stage pipelines. Generally, in-licensing candidates are molecules for which preclinical efficacy and safety studies have been done, and increasingly, those that have completed early-stage clinical studies. Eli Lilly, instead of looking entirely at late-stage chemical entities, has expanded a program that looks externally to mine the scientific community for promising preclinical leads.

Lilly announced The Open Innovation Drug Discovery Platform, a mechanism by which researchers from academia or the biotech industry can submit a molecule that they think is promising to Eli Lilly for evaluation. External investigators can upload and submit structures of their compounds to be evaluated for novelty and reasonable drug-like characteristics. Lilly scientists review the structure, and if selected, invite the investigator to submit a sample for further testing. Lilly makes available two panels of in vitro and cell-based assays to identify potential targets and mechanisms of action. The investigator receives a full report of all the biological data generated, and retains control of IP rights. Once testing is completed, Lilly evaluates the data and determines whether to initiate discussions on the relevant next steps. In addition, participants may access computational tools to facilitate the design of molecular structures displaying a particular set of molecular properties. In return for making these tools available, Lilly maintains first right to negotiate access to the molecule or to partner with the investigator in its development.

For Eli Lilly, the platform is an exceptionally cheap and risk-free initiative for identifying promising external molecular leads. The tools that it uses to screen external leads are presumably the same tools that they routinely use for in-house compound evaluation. The external scientists gain access to more screens than they would be able to set up themselves, or could afford to outsource. When identifying promising molecules, you have to sift through a lot of rocks to find that flake of gold. I’d love to see how the program looks in three years, and whether there’s really undiscovered treasure out there, or just rocks.