Open Source TB Megaproject Yields First Fruits

A unique effort by scientists to pull together scattered genetic information about the tuberculosis (TB) bug, with the goal of developing new remedies, has identified its first candidate molecule.

The Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) programme aroused huge interest when it was mooted by Samir Brahmachari, director-general of India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), in 2007, because it offered a new route to finding drugs for diseases in the developing world traditionally neglected by drug companies (see 'Open source' urged for TB drug design effort).

CSIR launched the programme in September 2008. Its research is conducted through collaboration and open source information, guaranteeing, it is hoped, that any drug developed from the process will be affordable. Brahmachari announced this week (11 April) that the one of the first projects undertaken under the initiative —  'Connect to Decode' or C2D — to pool all available genetic and biological information on Mycobacterium tuberculosis has yielded the first tangible results.

He said that for the first time TB scientists, research students and five private companies had used online tools to combine their work to show the links between the 4,000 genes of M. tuberculosis and the proteins for which they code. The work is held in a shared database that OSDD will share through its open portal.