Motivated by pharma woes, biotech blog makes debut

A new life sciences blog, Biopeer, has made its debut at the 2005 Bio-IT World Conference and Expo.

The blog -- a co-venture between Boston-based Global Seed Capital and New Zealand company Dot Lab -- can be found at www.biopeer.com.

Biopeer's co-founder and editor is Eric Gerritsen, a former vice-president for Lycos and founder and principal of Global Seed Capital. Gerritsen said he had studied how the internet related to the life sciences market, especially "the ways in which the web was going to affect all parts of the healthcare food chain, from discovery to health care delivery."

Motivation to launch Biopeer came from the dismal productivity figures plaguing the drug industry. For all of the US$100 billion spent globally on drug discovery every year, very few drugs -- just 15 in 2003 -- emerge at the other end. "At the heart of that productivity problem lies the classic problem of information being trapped in silos," Gerritsen said.

"Too much of the discovery research paradigm is based in three places in the world -- USA, UK, and Switzerland -- leaving out a huge amount of thinking talent in India, China, Brazil, Eastern Europe, and Russia.

"Biopeer aims to get some of that information out of the silos and some of that great talent into the game."

The site has been running for about two months in beta mode, and is already attracting around 5000 unique readers. The site is targeted at private and public sector research personnel, student and postdoc researchers, medical advocacy groups, as well as members of the general public that have a vested interest in seeing research in specific areas move ahead.

The site already covers more than 30 research topics, and is aiming for 100. Key areas include stem cells, bioinformatics, women's health, and topical subjects of global interest like avian flu.

"Blogging has clearly become part of the mainstream Internet media world," Gerritsen said. "When you combine blogging with RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and the ability to push content directly to users' computers, you have a very powerful publishing architecture that is of great benefit to life sciences researchers."

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 11 million Americans have created blogs and some 32 million American adults read blogs.

Particular effort has been made to make Biopeer a truly international effort, recognising that although research is done globally those efforts often do not make it to into the rarified circles of the current research paradigm.

"The team involved in Biopeer have in the past created some of the largest and most geographically diverse online communities on the internet. We are now bringing this proven ability to create global web-based communities to the challenge of finding better ways forward in healthcare innovation," said Gerritsen. "We aim to bring a whole lot more people into the challenge of finding medical therapies that can benefit mankind."