[Ip-health] SciDev.Net: 'Open source' urged for TB drug design effort

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=3Dprintarticle&itemid=3D408=
2&language=3D1

'Open source' urged for TB drug design effort
*
*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 =97 recently appointed director general of the Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a chain of 38 government
laboratories engaged in industry-oriented research =97 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.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


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