Bernard Munos, from Eli Lilly, wrote a very thorough article on open and collaborative research for neglected diseases and it was just published at Nature: Can open-source R&D reinvigorate drug research. What I particularly like about the article are the details he provides in describing how he thinks pharmaceutical companies can and should participate in the process.

Let's face it; we're in uncharted territory. We don't really KNOW how it's going to work. We're in the midst of a big evolving experimental process.

My vision for how it will work tends to be a bit more grass roots, less centralized group driving the process. Collaborative process tools like a Gene Wiki will enable dedicated experts to suggest work for less involved volunteers to contribute. People will collaborate with the people they trust and trust must be earned.Â

I had the honor and privilige of attending Science Foo Camp at Google last weekend. O'Reilly and Associates, Nature and Google sponsored the event and brought together roughly 200 cross-discipline scientists and open source software geeks from around the world. There was definitely a theme of those invited - open, collaboration, biomedical science, global warming, semantic web...

It was fantastic. I met a lot of interesting people and learned a lot. I of course was there talking about The Synaptic Leap. The attached presenentation was my super deck I created before the conference. I didn't present it in whole. I did however talk to people on every topic - on the bus, at the cafe, by the tents... The presentation has comments I made before the conference as well as notes on feedback I gathered - both positive and negative.

tslfoo.pdf 

I encourage you to post additional feedback below.

Cheers! 

Its been a long, hot, fun summer for me. Due to budgetary constraints, I chose not to send my kids to weekly day camps. This was the first summer I didnt officially work since I was 15 and its been great to spend it with my kids. I still managed to work mornings, a few evenings and Mondays when my mom took the kids. Did I say I wasnt working?? See below for our accomplishments this summer.

We'd like to open a research community for Chagas. We have at least one scientist looking to start an open project for Chagas and we're looking for somebody to be the online champion and leader. General responsibilities include:

• Writing a research cummunity introduction page, something that will inspire others to pitch in.
• Identify online news sources for Chagas
• Identify online tools and resource links for Chagas
• Evangilize open, collaborative research for Chagas spreading the word helping to get more people participating
• Monitor the site content people and aiding the community by connecting resources to needs
• Be generally proactive and vocal, giving The Synaptic Leap constructive criticism helping us to evolve The Synaptic Leap processes and tools

Other volunteers at The Synaptic Leap will set up the menu links and other core research community pages.

Email Ginger if you're interested.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interesting article, Gates Won't Fund Aids Research Unless They Pool Data. My summary and commentary on that aricle:

The Gates Foundation is awarding $287M over 5 years to 165 researchers from 19 countries and they are requiring the recipients to share their data. A few very important quotes from the article:

• "Through such data sharing, Dr. Hellmann says, rival teams can build on successes, avoid pitfalls and eliminate redundancy." Dr. Hellmann is the interim HIV projects director at the Gates Foundation.
• "Enforced data sharing, Dr. Self predicted, "increases the pace of discovery enormously rather than waiting for the process of writing formal journal articles, waiting for them to be published, and [confirmed] by other labs." Steve Self is a a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

What is particiularly significant about this is that the Gates Foundation is doing this with Aids, a disease that is not exclusive to tropical regions. There is a profit to be made here. Regardless, this aliance demonstrates that ...' the large enterprise is more important than the position I keep by holding my data close,' (another quote from Steve Self). It appears that the data will be shared across grant recipients and not necessarily wide open on the web. Regardless it's a big step.

They weren't very clear on how they will allow these organizations to profit from their discoveries. However Gates is clearly on the record of respecting intellectual property and the rights to profits.