????三年前，美國衛生部門官員曾建議大型制藥公司共同開發治療藥物而不是相互競爭，當時這些公司的反應很矛盾。

????畢竟，大型制藥公司是競爭最激烈而且自我保護力度極大的領域之一。這些企業為本公司藥品的方方面面都申請了專利；對于侵害自己利益的對手，它們會予以回擊；專利到期后，為了阻擋競爭者，它們會發起價格戰。

????但現在，全球最大的幾家制藥商將解除防御，跟同行分享自己保守最嚴密的資產，無論是基因研究，還是具體的藥物，而目的就是更快地研制出治療藥物。美國國立衛生研究院（NIH）上周宣布，為進行一項為期五年的研究，它已經動員10家大型制藥企業匯總數據，甚至包括一些已經申請專利的藥物分子式。這些公司包括百時美施貴寶（Bristol-Myers Squibb）、輝瑞（Pfizer）、葛蘭素史克（GlaxoSmithKline）和禮來公司（Eli Lilly）。隨后，同樣參與了這個項目的默克（Merck）很快表示，它將和輝瑞、安進（Amgen）以及Incyte合作，目的是看看這些制藥商能否對默克正在開發的一種新型抗腫瘤藥物加以改進。

????對NIH這項研究的探討始于2011年，此后，NIH院長弗朗西斯?柯林斯就一直在敦促制藥公司開展合作。他說：“和過去極為激烈的競爭相比，這個轉變相當有戲劇性。走到這一步花了一些時間。自始至終，相關討論的很大一部分內容都圍繞著一個問題，那就是這樣做是否對制藥公司有利？”

????另一方面，由于90%以上的后備產品都沒有通過臨床試驗，制藥商越來越沮喪，因為每次失敗可能會浪費多達10億美元的資金。它們生產的潛伏性疾病治療藥物最終上市后，比如抗腫瘤和抗老年癡呆癥藥物，往往只對一小部分患者有效。醫生開的處方經常包含多家公司生產的藥品，導致制藥商更加難以占據優勢地位。

????輝瑞抗腫瘤藥業務首席醫療官梅斯?羅森伯格指出：“無論一家公司的規模有多大，無論針對的是什么疾病，它都無法壟斷所有那些令人振奮的藥物。回顧一下以前的情況，我們是不是這個原因才一直無法在治療這些疾病方面取得更大的進展呢？是不是因為我們在某個時間段只能把注意力集中在某一個因素上呢？”

????NIH的這個合作研究項目價值2.3億美元，目的是找出新藥應該針對老年癡呆癥、2型糖尿病、類風濕性關節炎以及狼瘡的哪些誘因。柯林斯說，盡管科學家在這些領域提供的指導前景光明，“但似乎沒有哪一家公司能夠憑一己之力抓住這些機遇，至少效果不會像它們所希望的那么好。”

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????Three years ago, when government health officials suggested that major pharmaceutical companies work together to find cures to diseases rather than compete, the drugmakers squirmed.

????Big Pharma, after all, is one of the most competitive and fiercely protective industries around: Companies patent every aspect of their medications, fight rival manufacturers that step on their toes, and engage in price wars to ward off competitors when those patents expire.

????Yet now, some of the world's largest drugmakers are taking down their fences and sharing some of their most proprietary assets -- from genetic research to drugs themselves -- with each other, in hopes of reaching cures faster. The National Institutes of Health announced last week that it has recruited 10 Big Pharma companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Pfizer (PFE), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Eli Lilly (LLY), to pool their data -- and even some of their patented molecules -- for a five-year research project. Soon after, Merck (MRK), which is also participating in the NIH initiative, announced that it would team up with Pfizer, Amgen (AMGN), and Incyte (INCY) to see if the other drugmakers could improve upon a new type of cancer drug that Merck is developing.

????"It's a pretty dramatic shift from the hyper-competitiveness of the past," says NIH director Francis Collins, who has been nudging companies to collaborate since that initial discussion in 2011. "It took a while. Much of the discussion since then has been around that issue of, is this going to be good for business or not?"

????Pharmaceutical manufacturers, however, have grown increasingly frustrated that more than 90% of the drugs in their pipelines fail in clinical trials, wasting up to $1 billion on each dud. And when their treatments for insidious diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's actually make it to market, they typically work only for a handful of patients. Doctors often prescribe cocktails of drugs made by several different companies, making it harder for firms to gain an edge.

????"No matter how big a company might be, it does not have a monopoly on exciting drugs for any disease," says Mace Rothenberg, chief medical officer for Pfizer's oncology division. "When we look back, is this the reason we haven't been able to make more progress on these diseases, by targeting only one element at a time?"

????The $230 million NIH collaboration aims to figure out which disease-causing elements for Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus should be targets of new drugs. Even though scientists have already generated promising leads in these areas, "Those did not seem to be opportunities that any single company could capitalize on, at least not as well as they would like," Collins says.