[opensourcepharma] a open source cure for Ebola?

Thu Aug 7 04:39:58 UTC 2014

Matt,

I think the trials are too early (phase 1) to be useful at that stage.
Plus, the vaccines and drugs involved are controlled by the sponsors. No
one can access them without the sponsors' collaboration, and they are
unlikely to collaborate because they would not want to do anything that
might be construed as promoting an unapproved drug/vaccine. Lastly, I am
sure that CDC and FDA have already looked at these drugs/vaccines, and, it
there were any hint that they could be useful, they would have received
some form of exemption for emergency use as Mapp seems to have gotten.

Quickest and easiest way to get something going is the repurposing route.
The 3 papers I mentioned earlier in this thread are not a complete survey.
I have seen references to other drugs that might help, but have not tracked
the underlying publications..

b

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Matthew Todd <mattoddchem at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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