Eli Lilly, the Indiana-based pharmaceutical company perhaps best known for developing Prozac, has offered to conduct preliminary drug screening of compounds developed in academic labs. The company will screen the compounds using in vitro assays against Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis — all for the low, low price of getting the first shot at subsequent licensing deals or collaborations.

Lilly’s latest move is another sign of big pharma’s increasing creativity as it prowls academic labs for new early drug leads. Although broad agreements between universities and industry make some uneasy, pharma’s hunger for pipeline-replenishing drug candidates comes as funding agencies pressure academics to translate their results into therapies that will provide a clinical benefit. (See, for example, ‘Chemical screening centers get funding boost’ and ‘Flagship drug-development initiative picks projects’; subscription required). The result: more collaboration between the two sectors.

For Lilly’s latest endeavor, called the Phenotypic Drug Discovery programme (PD2), the company hammered out a universal material transfer agreement that would be signed by institutions, sparing researchers the hassle of negotiating individual agreements. The company also claims that the identity of submitted compounds will be kept secret, even from Lilly’s own researchers, by a special computer algorithm. According to The Scientist, about 65 institutions have already signed up.