Declan ButlerNature News, (04 Feb 2010)
info:doi/10.1038/news.2010.50Chemist launches collaborative project to make more potent form of much-needed drug ... A chemist — and social entrepreneur — in Australia is launching an open-source research project to develop a more potent form of a front-line drug against the debilitating neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis.
Matthew Todd of the University of Sydney hopes to persuade research chemists across the world to share laboratory time and expertise in a collaborative effort to find a cheap and efficient synthesis of the drug praziquantel. All results will be published in almost real time on the project's website — free of intellectual property restrictions — and later in journals, with substantial contributors becoming authors on any resulting papers.
Todd, who is currently on a six-month sabbatical at Stanford University in California, had been playing with the idea since 2006. He hired a post-doc last month after receiving three-year funding of Aus$400,000 for the project — mostly from the Australian government with Aus$75,000 coming from the World Health Organization — to start putting it into practice.Posted by
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