CDRI to lead consortium to develop malaria drug

The Central Drug Research Institute, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, will lead the Open Source Drug Development (OSDD) for malaria in the country.

OSDD is a consortium of institutes under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which have come together with the aim of developing new and affordable drugs for various diseases prevalent in the country.

OSDD for tuberculosis was started some two years ago by CSIR, and it has more than 700 scientists from across the country working for the development of a new drug for tuberculosis.

Explaining the reason behind the creation of OSDD, CDRI director Tushar Kanti Chakraborty said, “Diseases like tuberculosis and malaria do not attract multinational drug development companies because the market for such diseases is not very large. Given the fact that the cost of development of a new drug is around two billion dollars, whereas the market for drugs of tuberculosis is expected to be around three hundred million dollars, the MNCs are not very keen to work on such diseases. Thus OSDD was created by the CSIR, which brings together all its labs as well as other experts and inte