NEW YORK—Elsevier, a global provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced in late April that The Hive, its incubator project for biotech and pharmaceutical start-up firms, is now open for nominations and applications.

 

The Hive is an Elsevier R&D Solutions collaboration with a select group of biotech and pharmaceutical start-up companies. It aims to showcase the importance of empowering early-stage drug discovery and development and demonstrate how research teams can overcome R&D bottlenecks and challenges.

 

With up to five firms to be chosen in 2016, participants will benefit, Elsevier says, from increased visibility of their work across the pharma R&D community, as well as enhanced research productivity via complimentary access to Elsevier’s suite of information solutions, including user training and support.

 

“We’ve seen in recent years that over 60 percent of drug discoveries originate outside the walls of the traditional pharma companies, and almost half of the industry’s R&D pipelines are externally sourced—from open-innovation initiatives, from academia or from small biotech start-ups,” commented Alexander Van Boetzelaer, managing director of Elsevier R&D Solutions. “The Hive will not only help highlight innovative start-ups and give them a platform to promote their innovation, but also enable the wider pharma R&D ecosystem to learn from these very young and nimble organizations.”

 

In addition to providing successful applicants with increased exposure to the life-sciences community and complimentary access to Elsevier resources, The Hive will engage the wider pharma R&D community via case studies and other digital content featuring the participants, which will be widely promoted throughout Elsevier’s online and social networks. Individuals and companies following The Hive will have the chance to hear directly from the participating companies, while supporting and learning from their research projects.

 

The best candidates for The Hive are biotech and pharmaceutical start-ups and other small companies actively engaged in advancing early-stage research, with a minimum of three scientists on staff. Candidate companies may apply or be nominated for The Hive, and rolling admissions began in April.