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news.AstraZeneca said it will release preclinical data from more than 50 of its medicines as part of the DREAM Challenge, to develop cancer drug through crowd sourcing.
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The DREAM Challenge is an open innovation non-profit biology project in which scientists share ideas and data.
AstraZeneca’s move is aimed at advancing research into combination cancer therapy across the worldwide scientific community.
The company is collaborating with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the European Bioinformatic Institute, Sage Bionetworks and the DREAM community on the AstraZeneca-Sanger Drug Combination Prediction DREAM Challenge.
AstraZeneca said combining cancer therapies provides the potential for increased efficacy versus monotherapy and the possibility of overcoming drug resistance.
The data released by the company include about 10,000 tested combinations that measure the ability of drugs for destroying cancer cell lines from various tumour types including colon, lung, and breast cancer.
It will be compared with genomic data from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
AstraZeneca head of the oncology innovative medicines unit Susan Galbraith said: "AstraZeneca has a deep and broad oncology development programme assessing combinations of immunotherapies and small molecules to address the significant unmet need across a wide range of cancers.
"This open innovation research initiative complements our own efforts brilliantly and we are delighted that the findings could be published for the benefit of the global scientific community."
The DREAM challenge is based on the development of computer models that find the properties of drugs that make them powerful in combination.
Scientists with winning predictions for the best combinations of cancer drugs will have their plans submitted for publication in the Nature Biotechnology journal.