Medical academia and open innovation

Abstract

Academia research plays a major role in drug development, and is expected to be the driving force behind the creation of innovative drugs. However, in the framework of open innovation, it is not enough for academia to simply present their research results at academic conferences or in papers ; they need to promote development research to a certain extent in order to pass their assets on to companies. As a result, academia is now required to develop strategies for two issues that have not been given much attention in the past : securing high–quality patents and promoting research and development. Regarding patents, in the conventional flow of small molecule drug development, it was the role of pharmaceutical companies to create ones. That is, even if a new therapeutic target is discovered in academia and target validation is performed, a lead compound is selected and optimized by companies to produce the final product. In other words, the chemical structure of the final product cannot be imagined based on the initial research results, and there is little point in obtaining a patent at the academic stage. However, with the rise of new medical modalities such as antibody and nucleic acid drugs, this basic framework is changing dramatically. In other words, it has become possible and even necessary for academia to secure patents related to conceptual or final product structures from their research results. With the advent of various platform technologies, academia's involvement in conventional medicine is also expanding. Under these circumstances, academia is required to have the ability to fully incorporate the scientific potential for practical application of their research results into patent specifications. Since this process requires deep expertise in both medicine and intellectual property, it is important that medical researchers at least acquire a minimum level of intellectual property literacy. At the same time, in house intellectual property experts who accompany the researchers are needed.