Leveraging the Permeable Boundaries of Innovation

The cost of early-stage drug screening and medicinal chemistry now approaches 40% of the overall costs for pharmaceutical R&D¹. So it’s not surprising that pharmaceutical companies are now cooperating in the early stages of discovery research, in pre-competitive public-private partnerships (PPP), to combine the expertise of the global biomedical community with the capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry. Leveraging the mutually beneficial opportunities of these more ‘permeable’ boundaries has been at the core of our participation in a range of PPPs, including the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – the world’s largest public-private partnership for health research.

Bernd Sommer, Head of CNS Disease Research, is a member of the PRISM coordination team. “Neuroscience is an area where there is still insufficient knowledge about the underlying biological causes of disease and many open questions that need to be answered. This limited understanding is one of the reasons behind the dramatic slowdown in the development of new drugs. The PRISM project is closely aligned to Boehringer Ingelheim’s own approach to Central Nervous System research which focuses on gaining a better understanding of the brain circuitry underlying major untreated neuropsychiatric symptoms. We are optimistic that these biological approaches will lead to the development of effective treatments that patients with these distressing conditions so urgently need.”