Editorial (Thematic Issue: Playing Well with Others! Initiating and Sustaining Successful Collaborations between Industry, Academia and Government)

It was the best of times and the worst of times; conducting the science and business of drug discovery through unprecedented funding and regulatory challenges is now the unfortunate normal for industrial and academic/non-profit/government research labs. These challenges come at a time featuring extraordinary opportunities as new scientific discoveries and technologies are revealing ideas and techniques that are ripe for rapid development into novel therapeutics. Facing difficult realities imposed by diminishing resources, traditional barriers within drug discovery are being broken with increased frequency. The conventional and often enigmatic road toward clinical approval is giving way to a more open approach where the complimenting strengths of pharma/biotechs and academic/government labs are being leveraged to hasten the translation of new discoveries into new drugs.