Emerging Modalities with High Therapeutic Potential to Treat Human Diseases

Bringing a new pharmaceutical to market is a long, expensive, and complex process that encompasses research, development, approval, and commercialization. Many promising drug candidates fail in the clinic due to shortcomings in their efficacy, safety, or tolerability. Advances have been made to mitigate these issues and these include the identification of translational biomarkers, improvements in finding and optimization of small molecules or antibodies as established therapeutic modalities, and the use of more predictive models reflecting novel disease concepts. These strategies are effective, yet they might not lead to the next breakthrough therapy. Therefore, Boehringer Ingelheim (the Seeker) is looking one step further to find novel therapeutic modalities that have the potential to modulate targets of human disease including such that are usually not amenable by established modalities. Thus, Boehringer Ingelheim (the Seeker) desires partners to find and develop emerging modalities that have high potential to treat or modulate human disease. 

This is an electronic Request-for-Partners (eRFP) Challenge; the Solver will only need to submit a written proposal to be evaluated by Boehringer Ingelheim with the goal of establishing a collaborative partnership.

THE CHALLENGE

Pharmaceutical drugs or medicines are used to treat, cure, prevent a disease, or promote well-being. They modulate targets and pathways unbalanced due to a disease in an attempt to bring the system back to homeostasis. For many years, small molecules (chemicals) have been the only therapeutic modality available to biologically modulate drug targets. The introduction of antibodies as a further therapeutic modality has expanded the scope of druggable targets and improved the prognosis of patients. Now, Boehringer Ingelheim (the Seeker) is looking to identify other therapeutic modalities that have high potential to treat or modulate human disease. These modalities should be at the brink of showing their value in mammalian cells in vitro or in vivo. 

This is an electronic Request-for-Partners (eRFP) Challenge. The Solver will write a preliminary proposal (up to 10 pages, including supporting non-confidential information and contact details). This information will be evaluated by Boehringer Ingelheim with the goal of establishing a partnership. Upon completion of the evaluation, Boehringer Ingelheim may directly contact selected Solvers to work out terms for a collaboration contract. The monetary value of the contract will vary depending on the amount of work delivered and the agreed upon time frame.

[NOTE: Only proposals from Solvers who have the ability to work as the collaboration partner will be considered. Furthermore, Boehringer Ingelheim may elect to award $3,000 each for a maximum of 3 high quality proposals.] 

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on September 25, 2016. Late submissions will not be considered. 

ABOUT THE SEEKER

The Boehringer Ingelheim group is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, Boehringer Ingelheim operates globally with 146 affiliates and a total of more than 47,700 employees. The focus of the family-owned company, founded in 1885, is researching, developing, manufacturing, and marketing new medications of high therapeutic value for human and veterinary medicine. The Research Beyond Borders (RBB) function in the Discovery Research organization explores emerging science and technologies for and beyond our core research therapeutic areas creating new approaches and capabilities to discover and develop new treatments for patients. This allows us to capture breakthrough opportunities and prepare timely paths to entry for our therapeutic areas of today and the future. High priority areas include new target spaces such as the gut microbiome and hearing disorders, therapeutic approaches including regenerative medicine, and technologies such as gene therapy.