The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India has just launched an ambitious program to discover new drugs against problem diseases such as tuberculosis, kala-ajar, malaria and dengue. Under the name ‘Open Source Drug Discovery Program, ’ under graduate and postgraduate biology students will be invited from some 30 universities across the country to embark upon cutting-edge research to discover newer drugs.
CSIR director general Samir Brahmachari said, “We want to use the energy and enthusiasm of bright young people.” The technology minister Kapil Sibbal said that the patent system has not worked well for such diseases in our country. This will be new model for drug development according to him.
This drug discovery program is intended to complement the traditional patent-based method. Any new drug developed under this program will be generic and therefore cheaper than patented drugs.
According to CSIR, drug discovery problems will be posted on program’s website. Students from the 30 universities and researchers from across the world would be asked to pitch solutions.
In the first phase of the program, a new drug discovery would be attempted for tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that is a leading cause of death and for which no new drugs have been discovered since 1960s.
The CSIR hopes to involve about 1000 B.Sc and M.Sc biology students in the program. Jyoti Yadav, a protein biochemist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi feels that involvement in this program would allow the students to prepare for research career also.