Open Source Drug Discovery

CSIR-OSDD was launched in September 2008.[9][11] This project was conceived by Prof Samir K. Brahmachari, the Founder Director of CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology as an 11th Five year plan project of CSIR.[12] This was approved by the Government of India with an overall outlay of Rs 45.96 crores (about $12 million).[13] The project motto is “Affordable healthcare for all” and makes use of open source philosophy, crowd –sourcing concepts and a collaborative research model,[14] capitalizing on web based tools to fuel innovation and discover novel therapies.[13][15] 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[5][16][17]

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,[18] without Intellectual Property restrictions, and thus ensure affordability and accessibility.[1][5][19]

The first action involved development of drugs for tuberculosis (TB) bacillus (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).[20] The project has two phases:

1. Phase I (2008–2012) which will involve discovery and development of new drugs.
2. Phase II (2012–2017) which wil involve clinical trials.

OSDD started with the set up of a web portal, which is based on the Wiki model of website so that participating agencies can easily contribute to or modify the content of the website. The information uploaded can be then peer-reviewed. New drugs being developed will be in public domain. The generic drugs will be taken up by pharmaceutical companies so that the drug will be commercialised at reasonable price.[21]

OSDD is a collaborative project and a unit of CSIR. Prof.Samir K. Brahmachari, Former Director General of CSIR is the "Chief Mentor" of the Open Source Drug Discovery Project. M. Vijayan, President of the Indian National Science Academy, V. M. Katoch, Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and N.K. Ganguli, former Director General of ICMR, are the Mentors. Individual projects are taken up by participating bodies and are managed by a Principal Investigator.[21] These projects are centrally supervised by the OSDD project director Dr Sarala Balachandran at CSIR.

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.

OSDD is joined by 7,500 registered participants from different parts of the world. There are about 110 research projects being carried out. The collaborative work has identified more than 60 potential drug targets of M. tuberculosis. There are seven targets that are being examined. The first international publication of the consortium was in 2009 on the integrative genomics map of M. tuberculosis.[24] Since then more than a dozen of research are published.[25] OSDD currently operates the OSDD Chemistry outreach programme (OSDDChem). Under this system, students are trained in synthetic chemistry and the compounds synthesized in the universities, institutes and colleges in OSDDChem centres are submitted to the OSDDChem database and sent to CSIR-CDRI. These molecules are then taken up for screening at CSIR-CDRI for anti-TB and anti-malarial activity.[26]

• Official website
• Profile at OpenHealthNews
• Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment
• Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) Open Lab

• International Labour Organization
• Basic research