Pharma and the Sharing of Data in Drug Discovery

Not quite what I call crowdsourcing, but rather a  means to make it easier to share and fund expensive research efforts.  Ultimately the very expensive genomic research efforts have to be funded too.   Good to see this direction being explored.

Big Pharma Buys into Crowdsourcing for Drug Discovery
By Menaka Wilhelm  in Wired

" .... Part of the problem is simply that drug design is hard. But many researchers point to the systems of paywalls and patents that lock up data, slowing the flow of information. So a nonprofit called the Structural Genomics Consortium is countering with a strategy of extreme openness. They’re partnering with nine pharmaceutical companies and labs at six universities, including Oxford, the University of Toronto, and UNC Chapel Hill. They’re pledging to share everything with each other—drug wish lists, results in open access journals, and experimental samples—hoping to speed up the long, expensive drug design process for tough diseases like Huntington’s. .... "