{"entity":{"id":"idea-bio1-undruggable-open-consortium","kind":"idea","name":"A precompetitive consortium for the twenty hardest cancer targets","aka":[],"tldr":"No single company will spend a decade on a target that might be impossible. A shared, openly published effort across the twenty hardest targets spreads that risk.","summary":"The Structural Genomics Consortium showed that open chemical probes, published without patent restrictions, accelerate whole fields. The proposal is an oncology equivalent focused on the undruggable list (MYC, mutant p53, non-G12C RAS, fusion transcription factors, phosphatases), with pooled funding from several companies and funders, mandatory open data, milestone-based go/no-go, and freedom to operate for downstream drug development.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Structural Genomics Consortium","url":"https://www.thesgc.org/"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["icr-london","broad-institute","cruk"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-undruggable-targets","b-ip-collaboration","b-funding-allocation"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"A ten-year consortium produces validated chemical probes for at least five of twenty designated undruggable targets, and probe availability measurably increases the number of independent publications and programmes on those targets.","rationale":"The economics of individually funded undruggable programmes are unattractive because failure is likely and the science is generalisable; pooling makes the expected value positive for each contributor.","test":"A five-year pilot with three targets and four funders, benchmarked against matched targets developed conventionally on probe delivery, publication count and downstream programme starts.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"philanthropy","cost":"large","horizonYears":10},"route":"/ideas/idea-bio1-undruggable-open-consortium/","neighbours":{"institution":[{"id":"broad-institute","kind":"institution","name":"Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard","route":"/institutions/broad-institute/"},{"id":"cruk","kind":"institution","name":"Cancer Research UK","route":"/institutions/cruk/"},{"id":"icr-london","kind":"institution","name":"The Institute of Cancer Research","route":"/institutions/icr-london/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-funding-allocation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Funding follows fashion, not burden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/"},{"id":"b-ip-collaboration","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration","route":"/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/"},{"id":"b-undruggable-targets","kind":"bottleneck","name":"The undruggable drivers","route":"/bottlenecks/b-undruggable-targets/"}]}}