Are other approaches used to interact with the external scientific environment?
Neil: Sometimes our approaches are more conventional, such as licensing, partnering, and contract research. In other cases, they might be public-private partnerships or collaborations with a single academic institute. LSL: Are there examples of open innovation with your competitors? Neil: Not usually, but joint research endeavors exist that allow precompetitive knowledge to be shared across the industry. For example, Enlight Biosciences was formed in July 2008 by PureTech Ventures in Boston, which specializes in translating breakthrough research from top-tier academic institutions into therapies. A number of companies including ours, Merck, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly, are members of this consortium. We are working together to try to identify and bring forward new technologies to facilitate drug discovery. Another example is the NIH Biomarkers Consortium, which was initiated in 2006 to identify and validate biomarkers for disease. It is a public-private partnership formed by the Foundation f
