Orienting cancer

Eli Lilly and Co., Merck & Co. Inc. and Pfizer Inc. have joined in a precompetitive deal to study the pharmacogenomics of Asian cancer patients. By jointly gathering molecular epidemiology information on a large scale, they expect to optimize the return on investment for all three players, although the ensuing drug discovery and development will remain within the competitive space of each company.

Under the February partnership, the companies formed the not-for-profit Asian Cancer Research Group Inc. (ACRG), a virtual entity tasked with building a pharmacogenomic cancer database of about 2,000 tissue samples from the most common cancers in Asia. The Lilly Singapore Centre for Drug Discovery will provide the infrastructure to house and oversee the resulting open-source database...