Open Source Drug Discovery

Open Source Drug Discovery is a CSIR Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India-led Team India Consortium with global participation.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} offering a collaborative drug discovery platform for neglected tropical diseases like tuberculosis,^[6][7] malaria and leishmaniasis, which draw limited attention of research, based pharmaceutical enterprises.^{[8][9][10][5][1]} This program has a global community with over 7500 participants from 130 countries comprising researchers, academia, students, industries, educational institutions and so on.^[11][9] Anyone who is committed to the discovery of drugs for neglected diseases in an open source mode can participate in the program.^[12] OSDD functions by bringing together experts from diverse backgrounds to focus on discovering and developing affordable drugs for tropical infections.

History

CSIR-OSDD was launched in September 2008.^[13][11] This project was conceived by Prof Samir K. Brahmachari, the Founder Director of CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology as a 11th Five year plan project of CSIR.^[14] This was approved by the Government of India with an overall outlay of Rs 45.96 crores (about $12 million).^[15] The project motto is “Affordable healthcare for all” and makes use of open source philosophy, crowd –sourcing concepts and a collaborative research model,^[16] capitalizing on web based tools to fuel innovation and discover novel therapies.^[15][17] All the data and resources generated by the community are openly shared through a web based portal called Sysborg 2.0 specifically designed for this purpose ^[18][5][19]

The project has a healthcare model that blends together the policies of patenting and open source research, aiming to make novel drugs available as generic drugs,^[20] without Intellectual Property restrictions, and thus ensure affordability and accessibility.^{[21][21][5][1]}

Funding

The core funding of OSDD is from the Government of India. For the period of September 2008 to March 2012, Government of India had earmarked Rs 45.96 crores (about $12 million) for the project.^[22] The funds are used for funding the scientific projects, setting up infrastructure, and supporting ongoing activities of the project.^[23] Up to 2012, OSDD was a project under ‘National Laboratories Scheme’ of CSIR. For the 12th five year plan during 2013-2017, the planning commission has approved the continuation of OSDD as a part of Scheme for Open Innovation of CSIR.

References