CODATA, The Committee on Data for Science and Technology

World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
Past, Present and Future of Research in the Information Society
13-15 November 2005, Corinthia Khamsa Hotel, Tunis

Abstract:

The SNPS Consortium (TSC): A Model for Private Public Partnerships

Michael J. Morgan
Former Director of Research Partnerships & Ventures at the Wellcome Trust
and Chief Executive of the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Cambridge

The Wellcome Trust and a number of major pharmaceutical and other corporations founded the SNPs Consortium in 1999. The objective was to discover a large number of single nucleotide polymorphic (SNPs) variations in the human genome sequence, which might be associated with disease susceptibility. The consortium members agreed to release the SNPs in ‘bundles’ each three months via a dedicated web site. Members had no privileged access to the data and were only able to view and use the data on the same terms as other non-members i.e. the scientific community at large. The project was very successful, surpassing all the milestones and objectives and completing the task six months ahead of schedule and within budget (~$45 million). Other major biomedical projects (the human and mouse genome sequencing projects, pathogenic micro organism genome sequencing, and the structural genomics consortium, have all adopted a similar data release policy to the benefit of both academic research and commerce.