Collaborative Drug Discovery with Blockchain Technology
(2020) EITM01 20192Department of Electrical and Information Technology
- Abstract
- The cost of developing and researching novel molecular compounds in the pharmaceutical industry is very high today. If an actor accidentally releases too much information about a novel molecule to the public the molecule becomes prior art, and as an effect, can not be patented. This has resulted in a fragmented space where collaboration across organizations is virtually non-existent.
We propose a blockchain-based platform where participants can partially upload information of molecules while maintaining full ownership of the asset. This way novel molecules do not become prior art and gives the developer of the molecule the ability to reveal to the world that they have a molecule with a certain property, without actually revealing the... (More) - The cost of developing and researching novel molecular compounds in the pharmaceutical industry is very high today. If an actor accidentally releases too much information about a novel molecule to the public the molecule becomes prior art, and as an effect, can not be patented. This has resulted in a fragmented space where collaboration across organizations is virtually non-existent.
We propose a blockchain-based platform where participants can partially upload information of molecules while maintaining full ownership of the asset. This way novel molecules do not become prior art and gives the developer of the molecule the ability to reveal to the world that they have a molecule with a certain property, without actually revealing the molecule itself. Larger organizations could use this to auction out molecules that they are not interested in bringing to clinical trials or market, smaller organizations could use it to attract funding for a molecule that they have developed, and researchers could use it to timestamp that they knew the properties or a structure of a molecule at a certain date.
A prototype is implemented using the blockchain technology Hyperledger Fabric and is analyzed from security and performance perspectives. Given the right circumstances, Fabric provides a set of functionalities that can be used to make sure that ownership is maintained, integrity is protected, and critical information remains confidential. From a performance perspective, Fabric provides a good throughput and latency in the order of milliseconds. However, the number of participants that can maintain the network seems to be limited in the prototype. These results should be seen as preliminary as no fine-grained optimization was conducted. Further work required to make the prototype production-ready and open problems are also discussed. (Less) - Popular Abstract
- Developing pharmaceutical molecules is expensive. Organizations that develop pharmaceutical molecules pour a vast amount of resources into developing even a single molecule. In order to protect the rights of the molecule that was developed patents are used. However, to receive a patent the organization has to reveal exactly how their new molecule functions. This means that if an organization reveals what they are working on to others there is a high chance that they can not patent their work. This means that organizations risk being punished if they try to collaborate. Since it is so expensive to develop new molecules several actors in the space would like to collaborate.
Blockchain technologies aim to solve these kinds of problems.... (More) - Developing pharmaceutical molecules is expensive. Organizations that develop pharmaceutical molecules pour a vast amount of resources into developing even a single molecule. In order to protect the rights of the molecule that was developed patents are used. However, to receive a patent the organization has to reveal exactly how their new molecule functions. This means that if an organization reveals what they are working on to others there is a high chance that they can not patent their work. This means that organizations risk being punished if they try to collaborate. Since it is so expensive to develop new molecules several actors in the space would like to collaborate.
Blockchain technologies aim to solve these kinds of problems. Namely, how can actors that do not trust each other collaborate? We expect actors that do not trust each other to try to cheat the system. To prevent them from cheating smart contracts, consensus protocols and the blockchain data structure are used. A smart contract is a piece of code that participants can use in order to transact value amongst themselves. In the case of this thesis, they transact representations of molecules. Consensus protocols are protocols that make sure that all participants agree on the result of the smart contracts. Finally, the blockchain data structure is a chain of blocks. Each block points to the preceding block. It is used to verify that no data has been corrupted. Hyperledger Fabric is such a blockchain technology.
A prototype is developed using Fabric. The prototype allows participants to upload partial information of molecules that they are developing. This way, they can reveal to the world what they are working on without exactly revealing the structure of the molecule. Using this, they can find other people that are interested in collaboration without losing their ability to claim a patent later. Individuals that are not interested in patents, e.g. scientists, can upload the full molecule in order to prove that they knew a molecule at a certain date. The developed prototype is analyzed from a security and performance perspective and open problems that need to be solved before the prototype is production-ready are also discussed in the thesis. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9024457
- author
- Olsson, Christoffer LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- EITM01 20192
- year
- 2020
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Blockchain Cheminformatics immaterial rights cryptography
- report number
- LU/LTH-EIT 2020-754
- language
- English
- id
- 9024457
- date added to LUP
- 2020-09-03 10:59:25
- date last changed
- 2020-09-03 10:59:25
@misc{9024457,
abstract = {{The cost of developing and researching novel molecular compounds in the pharmaceutical industry is very high today. If an actor accidentally releases too much information about a novel molecule to the public the molecule becomes prior art, and as an effect, can not be patented. This has resulted in a fragmented space where collaboration across organizations is virtually non-existent.
We propose a blockchain-based platform where participants can partially upload information of molecules while maintaining full ownership of the asset. This way novel molecules do not become prior art and gives the developer of the molecule the ability to reveal to the world that they have a molecule with a certain property, without actually revealing the molecule itself. Larger organizations could use this to auction out molecules that they are not interested in bringing to clinical trials or market, smaller organizations could use it to attract funding for a molecule that they have developed, and researchers could use it to timestamp that they knew the properties or a structure of a molecule at a certain date.
A prototype is implemented using the blockchain technology Hyperledger Fabric and is analyzed from security and performance perspectives. Given the right circumstances, Fabric provides a set of functionalities that can be used to make sure that ownership is maintained, integrity is protected, and critical information remains confidential. From a performance perspective, Fabric provides a good throughput and latency in the order of milliseconds. However, the number of participants that can maintain the network seems to be limited in the prototype. These results should be seen as preliminary as no fine-grained optimization was conducted. Further work required to make the prototype production-ready and open problems are also discussed.}},
author = {{Olsson, Christoffer}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Collaborative Drug Discovery with Blockchain Technology}},
year = {{2020}},
}