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The drug maker Eli Lilly and Co quietly launched a new website today for a program dubbed Lilly Phenotypic Drug Discovery Initiative or PD². According to the company, “The PD² initiative is a unique opportunity for investigators from external institutions to submit proprietary compounds for potential screening in Lilly's phenotypic assay panel. This highly collaborative process is enabled by a web-based application that facilitates efficient transfer of information between Lilly and the investigator. The PD² screening panel is currently comprised of five modules which are relevant to therapeutic areas of long-term strategic interest, including oncology, neurological disorders, and metabolic diseases. This panel may change over time to reflect additional research interests.”

Company officials believe that program will allow it to evaluate and possibly license treatments from biotech companies and academic institutions "that are never fully evaluated as potential drug candidates." The launch of the PD² website—perhaps the first of its kind—clearly sends a signal that pharmaceutical companies are reducing their reliance on internal discovery programs to identify prospective new molecular entities and are eager to enter into licensing deals to find and acquire them. 

Membership in the PD² requires that a legal representative from the investigator's academic institution or biotech company executes a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA). Once the MTA is reviewed and approved by Lilly officials, the institution can create an account. Until that time, use of the site is limited to browsing only. I have no doubt that technology transfer offices at most major universities will be signing up for membership in short order.

I think the PD² initiative is an innovative and timely one given the massive reductions in R&D jobs that have taken place at many pharma companies over the past two years. Expect other pharma companies to follow Lilly’s lead.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

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 As many of you know, we launched BioCrowd about six weeks ago. Our membership is steadily growing and several early members suggested changes and improvements to the site. In typical Web 2.0 fashion, we listened to those suggested and decided to add several new features!

First, we added a new section to the home page called BioCrunch. BioCrunch will feature “fresh content” developed by BioCrowd members. Items that can be posted to BioCrunch include but are not limited to podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, manuscripts and possibly poster presentations. With this in mind, we urge interested BioCrowd members to send us stuff that you wanted featured in BioCrunch and shared with the rest of the community.

Second, you can now upload multiple files with discussion posts and add a single file to comments. Also, it is now possible to preview your comment or discussion posts (before you hit the send button) to insure that they are grammatically-correct and typo-free. 

Third and perhaps most importantly, we decided to publicly open the site so that RSS feeds from BioCrowd can be imported to other social media applications including blogs, Facebook and Twitter. It also means that member profiles and discussion posts are searchable by Google. However, all posted resumes and job listings will remain private and only available to BioCrowd members, i.e. you have to join to view them.

We are planning other improvements to BioCrowd—stay tuned for new updates!

Until next time….

Join Us and Be Part of the Crowd!

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Kevin’s selection of websites this month are almost exclusively devoted to RNA—not one of my favorite molecules (Kevin must have been thinking transcriptionally rather than translationally when he compiled the list). Because I’m not an RNA enthusiast (call me crazy) I will list t the sites in no order of preference: 1) Patrocles - The Database of Polymorphic miRNA-Target Interactions 2) RNA Editing Website and 3) The RNA Modification Database.

Kevin also reviewed a website on devoted to ichthyology and another that focuses on taxonomy. My favorite selection this month is theBrown Recluse Spider Bite Site a must read for all of you arachnid neophytes out there. Who knew that spider bites could be result in the loss of arms or legs?

Kudos to Kevin!

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Websurfing (try Stumble Upon and post biojobblog as one of your favs)

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