The collaboration between Novartis, Sweden’s University of Lund and the Broad Institute of MIT, which publicized the results of a genomic analysis of type 2 diabetes data on the Internet, is prompting researchers to say big pharma has seen the light.

“It is a sign of the times and also the way of the future,” Tom Misteli, senior investigator in the cell biology of genomes group at the National Cancer Institute, tells The Scientist. “Making datasets available openly is a reflection of the proverbial truth that four eyes see more than two…and allows everyone to try their favorite tool on a dataset.”

The researchers performed a whole genome association study in 3,000 Scandinavian individuals, half of whom with type 2 diabetes. Their aim was to search for genetic variants that influence risk of type 2 diabetes. The results are available here.

“Collaboration between two academic institutions and a drug company could be problematic if we would allow patenting of results,” say Leif Groop, one of the study’s principal investigators from Lund. “This was a way in advance to make it possible to work together without having to compete with each other on patent issues. Ten years ago everyone was expecting to get the ‘big fish’ and no one cooperated. We have matured, drug companies have matured.”

[tags]Genomic Database, Novartis, Open Access[/tags]