Open Source Drug Development?
Last week I thought of the possibility of open source drug development. I figured since today many tasks are computational in nature (AFAIK detecting chemical compounds potantialy active agains some disease is often a data-mining problem), there could be shared databases and shared computational power. Maybe some simulations of drug development also could be done on the computer… Obviously it gets more difficult as soon as real laboratories are needed and in the end drug testing etc.
A quick search on Google revealed that I am (obviously) not the first one to have this idea: For instance, there is an article in the Jun 10th 2004 edition of the Economist (subscription needed).
The quote a paper which describes just such a “shared database” approach:
“The difference between this proposal and earlier open-source approaches in biomedical research is that where before scientists swapped software, here they would collaborate on the data. And where projects such as the mapping of the human genome relied on massive top-down government involvement, this proposal would, like an open-source software project, be the result of bottom-up selforganisation among researchers themselves. That said, the authors acknowledge that a government or grant-giving charity would probably have to provide the initial funds.”
The research paper can be found on-line.
However, the article continues mentioning the challenging differences of medical research to the software field:
That said, the dissimilarities are profound. The financial needs and time to complete projects
are wildly different. A new piece of software can be thrown together in days or weeks, and
rarely more than a few months. The barriers to entry are low: many pieces of software begin
life in an enthusiast’s bedroom or garage. Pharmaceutical research, in contrast, is measured in
years, fails more often than it succeeds, and requires hard-core credentials and in many cases
expensive equipment, not just hard work.