ethics
+
policy
One lab’s reject may be
another lab’s cure
By Tania Rojas
S
hare and you’ll succeed. This is the motto for the open
source software movement that started in the 1990s.
It is characterized by the free sharing of software
to a community of computer programmers who debug
and update the software online. The result? High quality
computer programs rivaling those of Microsoft and IBM.
Fast-forward a decade and a half later, and the musings
of the open source software movement have inspired
the Tropical Diseases Initiative (TDI), a small group of
scientists in the biotechnology industry, to create a web
forum for scientists to collaborate in developing drugs. By
open sourcing, or freely sharing drug research, TDI hopes
Photo by Marcin Tusinski
Open source drug development would help provide treatments for those who need them the most. burden,” claims an article published in 2004
50 stanford scientific
scientists across the world will work to create drugs for
neglected tropical diseases.
Is it possible to open source drug research and
development? Sharing proprietary information may cause
millions of dollars to be lost in labor and equipment costs.
Furthermore, drug development, unlike software, can take
up to 10 years and more than $800 million. Try making a
drug for malaria in your friend’s garage!
The Need for Open Source Drug Development
There are strong incentives for open sourcing drug
research. Western markets today are prohibitive to drug
development for neglected diseases. Currently,
10% of global R&D is focused on 90% of the
global health burden for neglected diseases.
Patent incentives, heavy competition, and sky-
high clinical trial costs have deterred investors
in the biopharmaceutical industry to fund
research initiatives focused on developing
treatments for neglected diseases that affect
only developing nations.
The first and foremost disincentive is
the absence of pharmaceutical markets in
most developing nations. In many cases,
the general public cannot afford drugs from
pharmaceutical providers. In Ethiopia, for
example, where the mean household income
of village dwellers is roughly $140 a year,
only $36 annually can be afforded to pay for
treatment costs.
The low numbers of drugs to treat
tuberculosis (TB) demonstrate an example
of the pharmaceutical industry’s oversight of
third-world R&D efforts. Only 22 active TB
drugs are in development by pharmaceutical
companies worldwide—“a startlingly low
figure for a disease with such heavy global

by Pharmaprojects, a pharmaceutical R&D database. The
World Health Organization declared TB a global emergency
in 1993. The disease affects two billion people –one-third of
the world’s population, and is the largest cause of death of
any single infectious disease.
For developing nations that cannot afford developing
drugs for infectious diseases, open source drug research is a
promising opportunity.
Open Sourcing Drug Research
Currently, scientists can search through online molecular
databases to find information on drug targets—molecules
associated with a disease or physical condition—and drug
leads –molecules that cause drug targets to behave a specific
way, often inhibiting them. However, many drug compounds
that are shelved by pharmaceutical companies are not
accessible to the scientific community. Creating a public
database that contains drug lead and target information
not needed by scientists and companies is the first step in
facilitating open source drug development.
The most important feature of this database is that it
should provide computer simulations of drug leads that can
be successfully “docked” into the drug target. Certain drug
leads, for example, may not fit as well with the drug target.
Artificial markets for pharmaceuticals
can be created in countries that
cannot afford them.
These drugs will be assigned a low-score, and those with
better-fitting structures, a higher score. After a lead search
has been conducted, the database will return the highest
scoring drug leads. This will increase the chance of getting
potential “hits” - leads that affect the drug target the way
researchers want it to.
At the moment, screening a drug target with 2 million
leads takes roughly two weeks. Ideally, the database would
provide lead results instantly. While this would take
enormous processing power, algorithms can be used to
hasten the process. These algorithms would filter through
candidate drug molecules that are compatible with drug
leads, saving time and potentially millions in research.
Creating an Online Drug Development Forum
The creation of an online forum would allow scientists to
find, test, and optimize the best drug candidate. The website
would contain compartmentalized projects overseen by
volunteer scientists. Head scientists overseeing the drug
identification and optimization process would be responsible
for updating experiment results and data research. Along
the way, project overseers could reward team members’
contributions online. The research conducted by each
department could also be published in scientific journals,
promoting their reputation across the scientific community.
According to Steve Weber, Director of the Institute of
International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley,
the pharmaceutical industry would leverage from the open
source model. By open sourcing a drug compound whose
layout design: Stephanie Le
ethics
+
patent was about to expire (and loosing 80 – 90 policy
percent in revenues to generic drug competition),
a pharmaceutical company could benefit from open
source innovation on the molecule that it would be better
positioned to leverage.
The Future of Open Source Drug Development
With open source drug development, pharmaceutical
companies no longer shelve proprietary drug R&D for
neglected diseases. Once the drug is approved, there are no
proprietary licenses that disable it from being manufactured
by other parties. As a result, pharmaceutical manufacturers
will compete against each other to produce the drug, driving
down its cost. Artificial markets for pharmaceuticals can be
created in countries that cannot afford them.
Open source drug development will be possible if
c o m p a n i e s
a r e looking to
collaborate, not
compete, in creating
treatments that are
desperately needed.
Efficient search
algorithms must
also be developed to
http://phil.cdc.gov/phil_images/20030811/8/HIL_4428_lores.jpg
allow rapid testing
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB). TB is the largest
of open source drug cause of death of any single infectious disease.
targets and leads. In Few pharmaceutical companies are actively
addition, specialized developing TB treatments.
communication technologies must be created to allow
scientists to share their research findings and experiments
online.
Open source drug development is possible, but it is still
in its beginning stages. With the help of researchers from
institutions such as Stanford, it may start to take hold as a
way to reduce global disparities in health. S
Tania Rojas is a senior majoring in Human Biology and Science,
Technology and Society. She is driven by several passions:
biotechnology, science-fiction, and good karma. Her goal is to
become a non-profit biotech entrepreneur that develops treatments
for neglected diseases.
To Learn More:
The Institute of OneWorld Health
The world’s first non-profit pharmaceutical company.
http://www.oneworldhealth.org/
The Tropical Disease Initiative
An organization dedicated to developing treatments
for tropical diseases.
http://www.tropicaldisease.org/
Low Hanging Fruit
An open source database that shares drug/compound
screens against parasitic organisms.
http://www.ucsf.edu/mckerrow/fruit.html
volume iv 51