In their recent April 2007 issue, Fast Company reported that Merck has employed 12 drug 'scouts' in seven countries.  These scouts are tasked with finding new blockbuster drugs and/or vaccines.  All of these would be drugs are similar in that none of them will be discovered in Merck's own labs.  This new approach was driven by the fact that Merck's in-house research was failing to discover enough new drugs to fill it's pipelines. 

The approach seems to be paying off.  Idera Pharmaceutical, a small firm in Massachusetts,  has been working for years to develop a drug using antisense technology, which stops a cell from making harmful proteins.  It finally had a break-though when it started focusing on cell proteins called 'Toll-like receptors'.  Merck took notice and a deal was struck. Might this be an example of the way medical break-throughs will commonly occur?  We hope to see more of this...