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Exclusive Life Science Feature • • What is the best way to objectively segment patients with disease to understand why some are responders to medication and some are not? Controlling for diet and environment, why are some individuals at greater risk for Type 2 diabetes? Can in silico informatics technologies predict behavioral pharmacology? Can large-molecule medicines be made orally available and brain-penetrant? Who are the caregivers of the 21st century, and what are the disease/health risks of their occupation? transformation of the pharmaceutical industry. "This is how we bring great minds together to help solve the biomedical challenges of our time," he asserts. COLLABORATING WITH ACADEMIA Academia and industry are aligned in their desire to deliver innovative medicines to patients and see this as more than useful symbiosis. P3s enable academia and industry to join forces in a noble • cause. But differences between academic and industry cultures present challenges. Publication is the currency by which academic • scientists are judged for future NIH funding, promotions, tenure, and the most precious of all currency in academic institutions — the size of an academic investigator's laboratory space. Yet protectLilly solicits LIFA applications by invitation only through the ing IP is critical to industry, and publishing research too soon can deans of nominated schools and institutions. Lilly senior scientists threaten a company's IP. then review the applications for For this reason, the innovative merit with emphasis vast majority of P3s on innovative concept and the are precompetitive in qualities of the postdoc and nature — fundamental academic mentor. Finalists were science, tools, and techselected in April of this year and niques that can be readinvited to Lilly for interviews. ily published. There is From June to October, Lilly an unrelenting appetite performs the onboarding Dale Edgar, Ph.D., Lilly for precompetitive P3s, process for LIFA recipients. The especially with limited postdoc will spend a certain NIH and other federal amount of time working at both research funding. More universities throughout the United States the academic institution and Lilly, depending on the nature of are building drug discovery centers with the goal of producing the project. Postdocs and their academic mentors will typically valuable new medicines for patients in partnership with industry. be located in the same continent as the relevant Lilly research laboratory, which can include sites in the U.S., U.K., Spain, SEEK ENGAGEMENT FOR Singapore, and China. Edgar believes working at Lilly is part PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP SUCCESS of the incentive to participate in the program since it provides When Lilly seeks to engage with the global medical innovation the postdoc with access to Lilly resources and technologies not ecosystem, Edgar says it is driven by first thinking of the critical typically available in academia. The company also provides funds unanswered questions he previously described. "We present to the academic institution in support of the training partnership. those critical unanswered questions into different mechanisms or "Maybe they decide they need to buy a new tool, supplies, or send forums," he states. There are a number of ways in which Lilly does the postdoc to a meeting. It's completely up to them what they this. "In Europe, we work with the Innovative Medicines Initiative do, as long as the money is used to support the postdoc," says (IMI)," he explains. IMI is Europe's largest public-private initiative Edgar. The annual payment to an institution in the United States aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines is $45,000. The program also benefits the academic mentoring for patients. Members of the IMI governing board include investigator, because they will be a principal author on the representatives from industry (e.g. Lundbeck, Genzyme, Novartis, resulting publications, as the research is largely precompetitive UCB), the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries in nature. and Associations (EFPIA), and the European Commission. Lilly "There are far more critical unanswered questions than there is presently has 19 projects with IMI, all seeking to address at manpower at Lilly to pursue. Indeed, we certainly do not have all least one critical unanswered question. "All the projects are the answers we need to deliver innovative medicines to patients precompetitive," he states. "However, all are driving to solve who are waiting." Edgar believes that incorporating P3 as part something that we know will help us in our programs to speed up of the long-term research strategy and engaging postdoctoral the breakthroughs." scientists and other relationship-based frameworks are vital to the • "IN EUROPE, WE WORK WITH THE INNOVATIVE MEDICINES INITIATIVE (IMI)." 34 LifeScienceLeader.com Novemebr 2013