{"entity":{"id":"idea-fund-stalled-asset-registry","kind":"idea","name":"A public registry of stalled academic assets and shelved company compounds","aka":[],"tldr":"Thousands of cancer compounds that stopped development for portfolio rather than scientific reasons sit unused in university freezers and company archives. A public catalogue listing each asset's mechanism, stage, data, reason for stopping and licensing contact, with a standard research licence and a brokerage function, would let academic and non-profit developers adopt them.","summary":"A searchable registry where universities and companies list oncology assets that have stopped development (with mechanism, stage reached, available data, reason for stopping and licensing contact), coupled with a standard non-exclusive research licence and a small brokerage function to match assets with academic groups or non-profit developers. NCATS's discontinued assets programme and AstraZeneca's open innovation portal are partial precedents; the National Cancer Institute's NExT programme has taken up some shelved compounds. Most stopped programmes end for portfolio, not scientific, reasons, and their data are otherwise lost.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"NCI Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program","url":"https://next.cancer.gov/"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-fund-shelved-asset-escrow","idea-fund-nonprofit-pharma","idea-fund-trial-data-trust"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-translational-valley","b-negative-results","b-ip-collaboration"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"A registry with standard licences results in at least twenty stalled oncology assets entering new academic or non-profit development within three years, and at least two reaching a new clinical trial.","rationale":"The NCATS pilot with shelved industry compounds led to new indications entering trials within a few years; the constraint was discovery of what existed and negotiation time, both of which a registry with standard terms removes.","test":"Launch with commitments from five companies and ten universities to list assets; count downstream licences and trials over three years.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"data","cost":"small","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-fund-stalled-asset-registry/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-fund-nonprofit-pharma","kind":"idea","name":"A non-profit pharmaceutical company for the cancers markets ignore","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-nonprofit-pharma/"},{"id":"idea-fund-trial-data-trust","kind":"idea","name":"A single oncology trial data trust with mandatory deposit within eighteen months","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-trial-data-trust/"},{"id":"idea-fund-shelved-asset-escrow","kind":"idea","name":"Automatic offer of shelved cancer assets to non-profits after two years","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-shelved-asset-escrow/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-negative-results","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Failures are hidden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/"},{"id":"b-ip-collaboration","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration","route":"/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/"},{"id":"b-translational-valley","kind":"bottleneck","name":"The valley of death between lab and product","route":"/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/"}]}}