Main Page

From DrugPedia: A Wikipedia for Drug discovery

Consult the User's Guide and FAQ for information on using the wiki software.

CRDD at OSDD

Government of India & Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) plan to initiate an Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) programme under the able guidance of Visionary Scientist & Current Director General. OSDD Forum is an initiative with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best brains can collaborate & collectively endeavor to solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Leshmaniasis, etc. These diseases persist mainly in the third world countries. Tuberculosis (TB), for example, is a ravaging dreaded disease killing one person in every 1.5 minutes in India. Nearly 2 billion people are infected, i.e., 1 in 3 of global population. 8.9 million new cases have been reported in 2004 of which 80% are from the 22 high-burden countries alone.

Early stage drug discovery is a key bottleneck in the pipeline to find novel drugs for TB. The OSDD concept aims to synergise the power of genomics, computational technologies and participation of young and brilliant talent from Universities and industry towards a concerted effort to address this important scourge. The success stories of Open source approach in IT and in the Human genome Sequencing Project further underline the usefulness of such an approach in health care. India is one of the leading countries in Information technology. One of the key features of the OSDD programme is to use our expertise in IT towards drug discovery.

Computational Resources for Drug Discovery (CRDD) programme has been designed under OSDD to develop the portals that may accelerate the drug discovery process and bring down the cost of the drug. It will serve as the platform for interaction among researchers and for storage, retrieval and analysis of biological data. As an incentive to the participants innovative solutions will be rewarded. “Open Source Drug Discovery” envisions the participation of scientists and students in growing numbers as the momentum of the Open Source movement grows. OSDD is committed to provide a World Class Portal in Open Source Mode to build and coalesce user community including tapping intelligent minds for affordable drug development.