The document summarizes the origins and operations of the Pistoia Alliance, a non-profit organization formed to facilitate pre-competitive collaboration in the life sciences industry. The Pistoia Alliance was formed in Pistoia, Italy by GSK, AZ, Pfizer and Novartis to address common challenges with data interchange. Its mission is to standardize data exchange to reduce costs. Current projects include developing standards for semantic enrichment of literature, sequence data services, and electronic lab notebook queries. The organization has over 30 members and operates working groups to develop open standards through a governance process.

1. The Pistoia
Alliance
pistoiaalliance.org
A Construct for Pre-competitive
Collaboration and Open Innovation
Ramesh Durvasula, Ph.D.
Communications Officer, Pistoia Alliance
Director, Chemistry Informatics, BMS
BioIT World
2010

2. Agenda
• Origins of Pistoia
– History
– Industry Drivers
– Technology Trends
• Scope and Operations of Pistoia
– Mission, Membership, Governance
– Projects and Deliverables
• Discussion

3. Industry Driver: Externalization
Cost pressures, disruptive technologies, and other forces
often drive business processes to be externalized.
Fully Internal
Model
Selectively
PHARMA
Integrated
CHEM CRO
Model
BIO CRO
DATA CRO

4. Emerging Net-centric Pharma
Processes
PHARMA CRO
1 1
PHARMA CRO
2 2
PHARMA CRO
3 3
CRO
4

5. Inconsistent Semantics degrade
Effective Communication
C
B
A
The result from our
proprietary assay is “B”
CRO
But we only record numbers
in our assays!!
PHARMA

6. Greater Challenge: Unknown Semantic
Collisions
Image/quote from Abdul-Malik Shakir
Revealing assumptions is an essential
component of effective communication.

7. Opportunity: Changing Tech
Landscape
More Robust Technologies
• Web 2.0 / 3.0
• Services-Oriented Architecture
• Software-as-a-Service
• Open Source Initiatives
More Robust External Content
• Publicly available chem and bio sources
• Richer literature content
• Academic Sources of Tools and Data

8. The Path Forward:
Standardize, Simplify, Centralize
• Standardize our interfaces and
messages
• Simplify our cross-industry
architectures and support models
• Centralize services to reap economies
of scale and scope

9. Background—How it all started
• In Pistoia, Italy
• Meeting of GSK, AZ,
Pfizer and Novartis—
identified similar
challenges and
frustrations in discovery
informatics
9

10. Pistoia Mission
• The Mission
– Pistoia will standardize and streamline data
interchange in life science R&D.
• The Method
– Precompetitive collaboration between life science,
academia, and commercial partners.
• The Result
– Standardization will drive down the cost of data
exchange, cloud computing, and process outsourcing.
• The Benefit
– Informatics organizations can streamline commodity
services, and focus investment on innovation in R&D.

11. Benefits of Pistoia
• R&D Organizations
– Optimized investments
• e.g. reduction of redundant investments across industry
– Increased agility to leverage global R&D
• Rapid integration, streamlined data interchange and
analysis
• Informatics Solution Providers
– New markets and business models
– Reduced cost-of-entry to markets
– Reduction of customized solutions, leading to
higher margins

12. Pistoia Membership
updated: April 2010

13. Pre-competitive Space in the
Technology Lifecycle
Experiment
Innovation
Mainstream Precompetitive Space
Opportunities for Standards
Commodity
Legacy

14. Crossing the Chasm
• Pistoia is the BRIDGE to cross the chasm
to a more agile pre-competitive
environment
STANDARDIZE SIMPLIFY CENTRALIZE
PISTOIA MEMBERS SUPPLIERS

15. Learn from Other Industries
Transportation
Geospatial
Banking
Retail Clinical
Automotive
Healthcare

16. Scope of Pistoia Efforts
Target ID Hit ID Lead ID Lead Opt Phase I Phase II Phase III
Which Disease?
Which Target? Which Compound?
What Biomarkers?
Disease Association DMPK Properties? CD positioning?
Bioprocess Assoc BioAssay Development Safety Biomarkers?
Druggability Activity-Dose studies? Efficacy Biomarkers?
‘On Target’ Safety Risk ‘Off Target’ Safety Risk? …
Validation Tools Synthesis routes?
Competitive Position Competitive Position?
Variant Selection …
…
Genome/Genetic Data Genome/Genetic Data
Sequence Data
Expression Data Structural Data
Pathway Data
Patent Data
Pharmacology Data
Literature Data
16

17. Pistoia Standards Process
Governance & Pistoia Working Life Science
Operations Groups Community
Governance Software and
& Strategy Service
Board Providers
propose,
Technical & comment
Standards Pharma/
Operational Teams BioTech/Agro
Team publish
Not for
coordinate Profit
(e.g. IMI, EBI)
17

18. Current, Active Pistoia Projects
• Semantic Enrichment of Scientific Literature
– An open knowledge brokering framework standard which will
reduce the costs of integration from disparate sources.
• Sequence Services
– A standard service to provide access to public, private &
commercial data & tools, that will enable scientists to search,
store & analyse all their sequence based data in a single web
interface.
• ELN Query Service
– A query service standard applicable for use with data types
commonly found in electronic lab notebooks

19. SESL: Biomedical Knowledge Service
Framework
Multiple
Consumers
Target Compound Disease Network Knowledge
Dossier Dossier Dossier Viz Applications
Service Layer Std Public Common
Proprietary
Open Assertion & Meta Data Mgmt Vocabularies Service
Service
Stds Transform / Translate Business Broker
Broker
Consumer Integrator Rules
Firewall
Supplier Content
Firewall Suppliers
Db 2
Effort required
Db 4 to fit DBs to
Corpus 1 service layer
Db 3 Corpus 5

20. A Production SESL Service
Consumer Exemplar
Disease Dossier
Side Application
License
Service Layer Std Public Service Layer Std Public Service Layer Std Public Service Layer Std Public
Vocabularies Vocabularies Vocabularies Vocabularies
Assertion & Meta Data Mgmt Assertion & Meta Data Mgmt Assertion & Meta Data Mgmt Assertion & Meta Data Mgmt
Transform / Translate Business Transform / Translate Business Transform / Translate Business Transform / Translate Business
Rules Rules Rules Rules
Integrator Integrator Integrator Integrator
Broker Org #1 Broker Org #2 Broker Org #3 Broker Org #4
Corpus 1 Db 3 Corpus 5 Db 7 Corpus 9 Db 11 Corpus 13 Db 15
Corpus 4 Corpus 8 Corpus 12 Corpus 16
Db 2 Db 6 Db 10 Db 14
Supplier
Side

21. SESL Mock Up Slide 1
Gene: abc
Relationship: Any
Disease: Diabetes
Constraint: Species: Any
Tissue: Any

22. SESL Mock Up Slide 2
Export to Network View
Pivot on Assertion
Gene R’ship Disease Species Evidence
1 abc1 Co-occurs Diabetes Mus Paper UID:1234
2 abc1 Up-Reg Diabetes Homo ArrayExpress: XXX
3 abc2 Co-occurs Diabetes Homo Paper UID:1344
4 abc13 Co-occurs Diabetes Mus Paper UID:1314
5 abc7 Mutation Diabetes Rattus OMIMI: XXX
6 abc1 Co-occurs Diabetes Mus Paper UID:45643
7 abc1 Co-occurs Diabetes Homo Paper UID:2143
8 abc1 Co-occurs Diabetes Mus Paper UID:1204

23. SESL Mock Up Slide 3
Export to Network View
Return
Gene R’ship Disease Species Supporting Evidence
1 abc1 Co-occurs Diabetes Mus 3
2 abc1 Co-occurs Diabetes Homo 1
3 abc1 Up-Reg Diabetes Homo 1
4 abc7 Mutation Diabetes Rattus 1
5 abc13 Co-occurs Diabetes Mus 1
6 abc2 Co-occurs Diabetes Rattus 1

24. Current SESL Participants
AstraZeneca Funding
GSK Funding
Roche Funding
Pfizer Funding
Unilever FTEs
European Bioinformatics Institute FTEs & Hosting
Oxford University Press Content
Nature Publishing Group Content
Elsevier Content
Royal Society of Chemistry Content

25. www.pistoiaalliance.org
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.

26. Backup Slides

27. Where We Are

28. Who we Are: Board of Directors
GSK Accelrys
AZ ChemAxon
Novartis Symyx
Pfizer CambridgeSoft
Lundbeck Infosys
BMS Thomson Reuters
Roche

29. Pistoia Membership Levels
• Core Member ($15,000)
– Those organisations wishing to strongly influence the strategy &
direction of the Alliance
– Have a majority on the Governance & Strategy Board
– Pharma, Life Science, Chemicals/Biologics primary business focus
• Participating Member ($10,000)
– Those wishing to influence the technical outcomes
– Access to Governance & Strategy Board member openings
– Technical & Standards Team voting
• Contributing Member (free)
– Technical & Standards Team voting member
– Working Group participation
– Offer opinions on technical issues
Based around the experiences of: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/