“ I believe that
affordable healthcare is a right for all. But, pragmatically speaking, when it
comes to health, we need to have a balanced view between health as a right and
health as a business.”-
Samir.
K Brahmachari
Chief
Mentor, OSDD
“Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.” -Bertrand Russell
CSIR- OSDD
has established a CSIR-OSDD Research Unit at Indian Institute of Science
(IISc), Bangalore; as an open lab for facilitating OSDD’s drug discovery
efforts. The Unit will henceforth coordinate the informatics and wet-lab
activities of OSDD. Members of OSDD community are welcome to come in and spent
time on any research problem posted on the Sysborg portal
OSDD is a
CSIR-led Team India consortium with a global partnership. Its vision is to
provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global
platform where the best minds can collaborate & collectively endeavor to
solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for
neglected tropical diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis, etc. It
is a concept to collaboratively aggregate the biological and genetic
information available to scientists in order to hasten the discovery of drugs.
This will provide a unique opportunity for scientists, doctors, technocrats,
students and others with diverse expertise to work for a common cause.
OSDD is a
community of students, scientists, researchers, academicians, institutions,
corporations and anyone who is committed to discovery of drugs in an open
source mode. Open source drug discovery emphasizes integrative science through
collaboration, open sharing and taking up multifaceted approaches and getting
the benefits from advances on different fronts of new drug discovery.
What is an open lab?
OpenLab is a new research initiative for interdisciplinary and collaborative projects and it is a public private partnership where people from different sectors can contribute for a common cause. It allows knowledge sharing and brings different minds to work together. Any enthusiastic scientist/research fellow can work for a noble cause wherein the interested person can avail all the required facilities to contribute towards the work. In-silico work would be supported with the provision of tools and softwares that would help in a particular project. An open lab will help pooling in new ideas and working for the same. It gives an opportunity for a research fanatic to apply and implement his ideas with the available resources. Individual talent can be motivated through an open lab system and drive the idea further.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OPEN LAB AND TRADITIONAL LAB
Objectives of Open source drug discovery
The open
Source drug discovery initiative would establish a novel open platform for both
computational and experimental technologies to make drug discovery for
infectious/neglected diseases, cost effective and affordable to the people of
developing world. “Open-Source drug discovery” will be a program to find cures
for diseases that affect the world`s poorest of the poor. As a first phase,
drugs against Mycobacterium tuberculosis including drug resistant and latent
tuberculosis will be undertaken with the following major objectives:
- Development of a web-based portal for data deposition, exchange, evaluation and tabulation for analysis.
- To create a comprehensive System Biology approach for drug discovery.
- Human resource development with emphasis on encouraging young minds.
- Intellectual property protection to the extent its support public good.
- Academia-industry partnership i.e., Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in open source mode.
- To establish an International Collaborative Centre for Affordable Health (ICCAH), which will operate with Government, International and Philanthropic funding.
K.ASHISH
AIMIT, St.Aoyisus college
