[oats-sig] 'Open source' urged for TB drug design effort

'Open source' urged for TB drug design effort

FYI, got this through a French mailing list on open source but, ironically, the message is in English ;)

Catherine
--

> 'Open source' urged for TB drug design effort
> http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=printarticle&itemid=4082&language=1
>
>
> *An open source project could lead to more affordable drugs for the 
> world's poor T. V. Padma
> 23 November 2007
> Source: SciDev.Net
>
> [NEW DELHI] One of India's top genetics researchers has called for a 
> global, collaborative effort to design a new tuberculosis (TB) drug 
> using an 'open source' approach.
>
> Samir Brahmachari — recently appointed director general of the Council 
> of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a chain of 38 government 
> laboratories engaged in industry-oriented research — made the proposal 
> at a meeting on science and innovation in Delhi last week (22 November).
>
> He said that conducting such a project openly could lead to drugs that 
> were more affordable to the world's poor.
>
> Brahmachari, who was previously director of the Institute of Genomics 
> and Integrative Biology, suggested an openly accessible website 
> through which researchers could explore how information about the 
> Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome and other scientific data could be 
> used to design new TB drugs.
>
> According to his proposal, the problems of drug design could be 
> divided into a number of work packages, each tackled by different 
> teams of researchers, who would then make their proposed solutions 
> freely available to others for comment.
>
> Once potential solutions have been identified, the pharmaceutical 
> industry would be able to incorporate these into the development of 
> new candidate drugs and take them through clinical testing, just as 
> the computer industry makes use of open source software (such as
> Linux) in the design of new computer programmes.
>
> Brahmachari highlighted how TB continues to claim over 7,000 lives 
> daily across the world, mostly affecting the poor.
>
> "The right to good health is a right for all," he said. "How much [of 
> new medical research findings] should be protected and how much should 
> be made open access is a matter that should be debated."
>
> Brahmachari said that his proposals for an 'open source' approach were 
> in the spirit of the original human genome project, where information 
> was placed on an open database freely accessible to scientists across 
> the world.
>
> "Can we create for infectious diseases an 'open source' mobilisation 
> that will allow us to use the brainpower of the whole world, including 
> both experienced and young researchers, to advance the process of drug 
> discovery?" he asked.
>
> "Once we do this, we can start conquering other diseases using the 
> same 'open source' model," he added.
>
> Dinesh Abrol, a scientist with the National Institute for Science, 
> Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) in New Delhi, cautioned 
> that an open source approach to designing new drugs for infectious 
> diseases should not be misused by large pharmaceutical corporations to 
> later patent products developed with help from the open source databases.
> The meeting at which Brahmachari spoke was organised by NISTADS to 
> present to Indian science policymakers the outcome of a research 
> project into current trends in science and innovation in China, India 
> and South Korea, compiled by the London-based think-tank Demos.
>
>
>

--
Catherine Roy

www.catherine-roy.net 

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.7/1152 - Release Date: 26/11/2007 10:50 AM