Compound asset sharing initiatives between pharmaceutical companies, funding bodies, and academia: Learnings and successes

Over recent years, there have been several initiatives to gain access to compounds which have been deprioritized by pharmaceutical companies, but which have a data package allowing them to be used in human experimental medicine studies. Such compounds provide an invaluable resource for probing human biology and disease pathology, for improving translational capabilities, and ultimately for repurposing to new therapeutic indications. The authors have been involved with the setting up of the Medicine's Chest initiative, which aimed to access compounds for the use in clinical studies of the central nervous system. Other initiatives include those set up by AstraZeneca, the Medical Research Council in the UK and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences in the US. The purpose of this editorial is to provide an update on progress with some of these initiatives, and to identify some learnings for future endeavours.