The Linux operating system, about a decade ago, is seen to have helped spark a revolution in how software is developed. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a move by drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC could now test how well similar open source principles work for developing new drugs.
Last week, the pharmaceutical company opened access to the designs behind 13,500 chemical compounds. These compounds, it said, may possibly be capable of inhibiting the parasite that causes malaria. The company hopes that sharing information and working together will help scientists discover a drug for treating the mosquito-borne disease faster than the company could on its own. The move is reportedly one of the largest experiments yet by the pharmaceutical industry. Applying techniques of open source development to drug discovery is based on the idea that collaboration by volunteers will create products that are not owned by a single company.
Large pharmaceutical companies tightly secure their formulas for drugs and other intellectual property. The Glaxo effort is seen to build off earlier open source drug efforts. These include a nonprofit organisation called Tropical Disease Initiative and a project started last year that opens compounds from Pfizer Inc. to researchers at a nonprofit organisation called Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative.
The Glaxo data will be hosted by three websites, two of which are government-funded (one in Europe and one in the US). The third is a Silicon Valley company called Collaborative Drug Discovery Inc. (CDD). CDD's free web service seeks to integrate elements of a Facebook-like social network with an Oracle-style database. All registered researchers of the CDD site will be able to view graphical depictions of Glaxo's compounds and relevant chemical and biological data. The database also allows researchers to upload their own data to be viewed by other researchers. If a researcher wants to combine the data with proprietary information, CDD also offers a fee-based, secure version of its site that allows researchers to lock up information they want to keep secret.
Search for more pharma related information
