As alliances form a key component of research and development for most major pharmaceutical companies, there has been much discussion about how the value of these partnerships can be maximized. In this issue, Jones highlights recent trends in alliance formation and discusses how the leakage of value from alliances can be minimized. Meanwhile, Woodcock and colleagues consider the strategic barriers to innovation, as exemplified by analgesic drug development. Despite dramatically increased investment and major advances in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of pain, there have been few new molecular entities approved in this field in recent years. In their Perspective, the authors propose strategies to reinvigorate drug development for pain, and advocate public–private partnerships to boost translational research. The obstacles in translational research into drugs that alleviate addiction to nicotine are reviewed by Lerman and colleagues. Limitations of current animal or human behavioural models are a major hurdle in this area, and the authors explore strategies by which their predictive value might be improved. Addiction is one condition for which recent insights into muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) could provide new opportunities for drug development. Wess and colleagues discuss the wealth of information gained from mAChR-knockout mice and the implications for the therapeutic potential of specific modulators of various mAChR subtypes for disorders that also include pain, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and diabetes. And in our final review, Faivre and colleagues present the discovery and development of sunitinib, a multitargeted kinase inhibitor with potent anti-angiogenic and antitumour activities, and discuss the translational research required to optimize the use of sunitinib and other multitargeted kinase inhibitors.