[opensourcepharma] a open source cure for Ebola?

Thu Aug 7 02:26:38 UTC 2014

I would guess that there are three strands to this idea on Ebola, in order
of immediacy:

1) Survey the current state of what's being evaluated already
2) Assess potential molecules that could be repurposed, e.g. molecules that
are approved for related infections, or those that have shown some efficacy
but have not been developed further
3) Propose ways of generating new hits from new screens.

I'm assuming that the first step is 1) (and maybe a little bit of 2), but
that 3) is too much. So we need a survey of the current state of knowledge.
That seems to me to be something that could be crowdsourced, since it's an
information gathering task - essentially a review of where we stand.
Bernard already brought up many key pieces of information.

In my experience the way to assemble the state of a field using multiple
contributors is to use a wiki, so that anyone can contribute to the writing
and the writing can be kept up to date. A wiki usually comes with a "talk"
page to allow people to discuss edits, or a separate community could be set
up quickly. Wikipedia itself doesn't really host "live" pages with primary
content, but sticks rigorously to secondary sources, so it may be necessary
to use a different site, but WP's user base would be perfect for this. Once
it's started in the open, we can bring in people with insider knowledge of
the field.

If some agency were willing to sponsor a few small prizes for writing
quality, that might stimulate considerable interest from student
participants, particularly given how current this is. e.g. $100, $500 and
$1000 prizes for the highest quality contribution(s) judged by a panel in
one month's time. The fact that this is in the news right now as a serious
public health problem should help to raise awareness. We would need a few
people to act as mentors for the writing, pointing out what's needed, or
resolving disagreements etc with a light touch.

Once the review is done, that should help planning of what to do next, be
that approaching funding agencies, or crowdsourcing something more targeted
to trial design etc. There could even be a voting process for where to
focus further research in the short term.

Tomasz do I have that right, that this would be the necessary first step(s)
for what you suggest? i.e. to help the decision making process? Having TLS
interested in taking this further would make the analysis of the current
status of the field part of something bigger. Bernard  - the chance to
critically evaluate the current trials that are underway: do you see that
as adding something on top of the public domain knowledge about the trials
that are active that you already found? e.g. discussion about other
possible therapies that have been considered and abandoned?

Best,

Mat

On 6 August 2014 20:28, Tomasz Sablinski <tomasz at transparencyls.com> wrote:

> Hi Bernard,
>
> This is the concept, indeed. A crowd - sourced, well defined plan.
> Financing the execution, and study conduct itself would be subject of
> consultation with the players you mention and probably some others
> interested in paying for it.
>
> regards,
> Tomasz
>
>
>
>
>
-- 
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School of Chemistry | Faculty of Science

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