The document discusses the role and impact of public-private partnerships in health innovation, particularly highlighting the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) as a successful model for open-access research in drug discovery. It emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, long-term governance, and addressing social and political barriers to innovation. Additionally, it suggests further research into the advantages of open-access versus intellectual property-based models in different contexts.

1. Foresighting
Trajectories for
Advanced Innovative
Technologies
Professor Joyce Tait (Edinburgh)
Professor Joanna Chataway (RAND, OU)
Dr Michele Mastroeni (RAND, Edinburgh)
1

2. Foresighting Future Value
Chains
Professor Joyce Tait
2

3. 3

4. 4
Innovation Ecosystem
Business Model 5
Business Model 4
Business Model 3
Business Model 2
Business Model 1
Value Chain
Regulation
Regional
Innovation
Policy
Scenario 2
Stakeholder
engagement
IP Regimes
Conceptual
scenarios
(STRATIS)
(AGIT) (RISE)(CSE)
Quantitative
scenarios
Funding
Models
RRI
Markets

5. 5

6. joyce.tait@ed.ac.uk
6

7. Joanna Chataway
Perspectives on
public private
partnerships
health innovation
A focus on the SGC

8. Health innovation public private partnerships are
growing in number, diversifying in nature and are a
major feature of the policy landscape
UK Life Science Strategy put partnerships and
collaborations at the heart of government policy:
 Strategy for UK Life Sciences: Building a Life Sciences
Ecosystem
 Innovation Health and Wealth: Accelerating adoption
and diffusion in the NHS (includes opening up NHS
patient data)
 TSB and research councils working to promote
partnership
Public private partnerships: a growing
phenomenon

9. SGC at a glance
 A public private partnership that supports the discovery of
medicines through open access research
 Based in Oxford and Toronto, operating since 2004
 Funded by Wellcome Trust, Canadian government, and
9 leading pharma companies, 20M $/year currently
 Open Access Policy
 Promptly placing results, reagents and know-how in the public domain
(no patents)

10. SGC’s open innovation model in early stage
drug discovery
Public-Private
Partnership
Public Domain Proprietary
Tools & Basic
Knowledge
Discovery and
Exploration
Drug Discovery and
Development
Facilitated by access to
increased amount of
information in the public
domain
Weigelt J. EMBO Reports 10:941-5 (2009)

11. SGC’s knowledge production
1564
protein structures
deposited in the
Protein Data Bank
654
peer reviewed
publications
128
biological probes
19
epigenetic
chemical probes

12. SGC as a model for investing in knowledge
with multiple incentives for investment
Open access Collaborative
research opportunities
De-risk emerging
areas of science
Linking with
strategic initiatives
Rapid and efficient
research
processes

13. De-risking new areas of protein structure
science

14. However there are disincentives to
investment
Unprotected intellectual property
(private sector)
Limited opportunities for spillover
effects (public sector)

15. However there are disincentives to
investment
Unprotected intellectual property
(private sector)
Limited opportunities for spillover
effects (public sector)
‘The SGC needs to show evidence of
wider benefits in the form of economic
benefits, spillovers and encouraging
investment. The science is good but the
SGC hasn’t catalysed the development of
a cluster in the way [we] hoped.’

16. SGC specific conclusions
The SGC is successful and should be maintained
The public sector:
Ensures open access
Allows the SGC to remain innovative
The private sector:
Provides the SGC’s industrial edge, making it efficient and
effective

17. Thinking more broadly….
 Open access platforms shown to be viable in the pharmaceutical
sector but the question is will open access challenge existing
conventions more broadly

This model challenges pre-conceived ideas about the way health
research and pharma actors must work together

Social technology experiments that bridge public and private sectors
in new ways may be important to the future of drug discovery but will
they and should they challenge broader institutional norms?

Do we need to think harder about what sorts of partnerships are
appropriate for different contexts and objectives? What kind of
research do we need to determine this? An RoI study that looks at
the advantages and disadvantages of open access against IP based
pathways in different contexts?

19. chataway@rand.or
g

20. Mission-Oriented Research
Pulling together to overcome obstacles
20
Michele Mastroeni, RAND Europe

21. Difficulties of bringing innovation forward
 Many of the problems are not technical; they
may be social, political or economic
 These are important issues because some of the
innovations are meant to offer solutions to
serious problems faced by society
 How can the key organizations and actors be
encouraged to pull together to deliver socially
beneficial innovation?
21

22. Missions or Grand Challenges
 Some have called for a return to mission-
oriented research to overcome some of these
problems; but must address:
 Interdisciplinarity
 Cross-departmental coordination and coherence
 Multi-level governance
 Technology convergence or fusion
 Cross-sector collaboration
 Long-term time horizons
22

23. Innogen Approach
 A meta-heuristic that creates an air of
collaboration and willingness to spot and work
through issues that need addressing
 Need to determine how to:
 Narrow and define broad challenges to allow
for realistic efforts
 Identify and involve different stakeholders
 Identify and influence that institutional
changes necessary
23

24. mastroen@rand.org
24

25. www.innogen.ac.uk
For further details, please contact Elisabeth
Barlow at elisabeth.barlow@ed.ac.uk
25