Sage Bionetworks is the Latest Open Biotechnology Effort

Slowly but surely, biology and biotechnology efforts that follow open source principles are improving, and as they mature, they could have a profound effect on healthcare, longevity, disease control, and much more. Biotechnology reporter Luke Zimmerman's latest dispatch on the work of Sage Bionetworks founder Stephen Friend offers a case in point.

With gene sequencing efforts going on all around the world--but mostly going on in silos, where information is not shared in optimal ways--Friend is convinced that shared data could bring on huge advances in biotechnology. His is only one of several promising efforts in this area.

Friend was formerly a top executive at pharmaceutical company Merck, but quit his job and founded Sage Bionetworks.  "Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing unit of the e-commerce giant, is hosting the massive amounts of genomic data that Sage wants to put in its public repository," writes Zimmerman. He also notes that many large companies, including Merck and Pfizer are participating in Sage's data collection efforts