Academic-Pharma drug discovery alliances: seeking ways to eliminate the valley of death.

Industrial pharmaceutical companies (Pharma) share a common goal with academic scientists (Academia) in that they wish to create an environment in which patients are treated for diseases with ever more effective therapies. As disease biology has proven to be ever more complex and money and new drugs are becoming more elusive, Pharma and Academia are reaching toward each other with ever greater collaborative intent. There are a growing number of collaboration models that allow scientists to work together and profit from the creation of new drugs. Here I give a personal view of how we came to where we are, present an overview of a number of these models and look to the future in terms of running successful discovery alliances.