Could Open-Source Medicine Prepare Us For The Next Pandemic? (fastcompany.com) 54
"A new, Linux-like platform could transform the way medicine is developed — and energize the race against COVID-19," reports Fast Company, while arguing that the old drug discovery system "was built to benefit shareholders, not patients."
Fast Company's technology editor harrymcc writes: Drug development in the U.S. has traditionally been cloistered and profit-motivated, which means that it has sometimes failed to tackle pressing needs. But an initiative called the Open Source Pharma Foundation hopes to apply some of the lessons of open-source software to the creation of new drugs — including ones that could help fight COVID-19.
From the article: The response to COVID-19 has been more open-source than any drug effort in modern memory. On January 11, less than two weeks after the virus was reported to the World Health Organization, Chinese researchers published a draft of the virus's genetic sequence. The information enabled scientists across the globe to begin developing tests, treatments, and vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies searched their archives for drugs that might be repurposed as treatments for COVID-19 and formed consortiums to combine resources and expedite the process. These efforts have yielded some 90 vaccine candidates, seven of which are in Phase I trials and three of which are advancing to Phase II. There are nearly 1,000 clinical trials listed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention related to COVID-19.
The gathering of resources and grassroots sharing of information aimed at combating the coronavirus has put open-source methods of drug development front and center. "It's our moment," said Bernard Munos, a former corporate strategist at pharma company Eli Lilly... Munos has been arguing for an open-source approach to developing drugs since 2006. "A lot is at stake because if it's successful, the open-source model can be replicated to address other challenges in biomedical research."
So now the Open Source Pharma Foundation hopes to offer "a platform where scientists and researchers can freely access technological tools for researching disease, share their discoveries, launch investigations into molecules or potential drugs, and find entities to turn that research into medicine..." according to the article.
"If the platform succeeds, it would allow drugs to succeed on their merit and need, rather than their ability to be profitable."
Fast Company's technology editor harrymcc writes: Drug development in the U.S. has traditionally been cloistered and profit-motivated, which means that it has sometimes failed to tackle pressing needs. But an initiative called the Open Source Pharma Foundation hopes to apply some of the lessons of open-source software to the creation of new drugs — including ones that could help fight COVID-19.
From the article: The response to COVID-19 has been more open-source than any drug effort in modern memory. On January 11, less than two weeks after the virus was reported to the World Health Organization, Chinese researchers published a draft of the virus's genetic sequence. The information enabled scientists across the globe to begin developing tests, treatments, and vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies searched their archives for drugs that might be repurposed as treatments for COVID-19 and formed consortiums to combine resources and expedite the process. These efforts have yielded some 90 vaccine candidates, seven of which are in Phase I trials and three of which are advancing to Phase II. There are nearly 1,000 clinical trials listed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention related to COVID-19.
The gathering of resources and grassroots sharing of information aimed at combating the coronavirus has put open-source methods of drug development front and center. "It's our moment," said Bernard Munos, a former corporate strategist at pharma company Eli Lilly... Munos has been arguing for an open-source approach to developing drugs since 2006. "A lot is at stake because if it's successful, the open-source model can be replicated to address other challenges in biomedical research."
So now the Open Source Pharma Foundation hopes to offer "a platform where scientists and researchers can freely access technological tools for researching disease, share their discoveries, launch investigations into molecules or potential drugs, and find entities to turn that research into medicine..." according to the article.
"If the platform succeeds, it would allow drugs to succeed on their merit and need, rather than their ability to be profitable."
Probably not (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it can, given that there are over 20 open source vaccine projects for this virus most of which languish either because they got started and then abandoned or nobody is interested in taking up the mantle.
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Also because hospitals are not eager to start using untested designs that have no regulatory stamp of approval or certification to show the design has undergone extensive testing. They won't even consider that unless the alternative is to let people die - and even then the legal departments will probably advise the death is cheaper than liability.
"No" suffices (Score:3)
Sufficient to invoke Betteridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So far we only know of one working solution to Covid-19. "Arrest everyone" is how Xi handled it, and it worked (and now Xi is getting blamed for "too much winning"). The summary failed to convince me there is an OSS version of "You're all guilty of having SARS-CoV-2 until proven innocent." (Lack of time also dissuaded me from pursuing the links.)
Oh yeah. One more thing. We were really lucky. This time. Tweak a couple of parameters and it could
Re: "No" suffices (Score:2)
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I don't think it can, given that there are over 20 open source vaccine projects for this virus most of which languish either because they got started and then abandoned or nobody is interested in taking up the mantle.
obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].
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That and research on drugs usually takes labs, equipment, etc. I note the researchers all seem to be employed by some entity that funds that. Even unis will demand their cut because labs and such are not cheap.
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Re: No. (Score:3)
Developing, patenting, and getting regulatory approval is absurdly expensive - and worth every penny it costs.
Fixed that for you.
Where is WHO? (Score:3, Insightful)
This kind of thing should be what WHO or UN does. Why some random individuals need to start these kind of things? It it was started why WHO or UN, it would benefit from the trust of known organization and connections and it would be more famous than other individual groups, making it sure that all work is focused in one place.
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It it was started why WHO or UN, it would benefit from the trust of known organization
You answered your own question--the WHO and the UN are not de facto trustworthy organizations. They may do some good things, but that is usually in spite of each organization's bureaucratic morass. Something of the magnitude of an "open source" vaccine for a world-wide pandemic is going to attract the attention of the unhelpful, sometimes corrupt, bureaucratic jackholes that muck up much of what these organizations touch. It's far too important and noteworthy to be ignored by the kind of people who will do
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No (Score:2)
The current pandemic would last until the proper number of deaths have occurred and then the virus would disappear because it would not have any hosts left to infect. Based on the fact that the world has been so effective at "fattening the curve" (making the peak death rate of millions per day spread over 7 days into thousands per day spread over decades), and that immunity does not outlast the new "fattness of the curve" the necessary end result is that humans will be gone from this planet in a decade or
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Stephen King was right: This is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Uh... no. You’re off by a half century or so. T. S. Eliot wrote The Hollow Men in 1929.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Er, 1925.
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You are right, of course :)
Nonetheless, I keep having these recurrent dreams about little a strangle little old black lady rocking on the porch. And rats in the cornfield ....
Re: No (Score:4, Insightful)
We flattened the curve so that under-staffed billing departments at hospitals could keep up with the insurance & Medicare billing - hate to lose any billable items while they can no longer perform elective procedures and patients are too scared to go to the hospital for necessary treatments/procedures.
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Based on the fact that the world has been so effective at "fattening the curve" (making the peak death rate of millions per day spread over 7 days into thousands per day spread over decades), and that immunity does not outlast the new "fattness of the curve" the necessary end result is that humans will be gone from this planet in a decade or so.
Flatness you mean? Anyway, that's not how it works. If the reproduction rate (R0) stays above 1 for a long time, that ends with herd immunity and a large % of the population infected. But even then, not everybody will get infected. And not everybody who does, will die (in this case: far from it). Even with everybody infected and a 50% fatality rate, half the population keeps walking.
At some point R0 must go below 1 due to running out of new hosts to infect. Not doing so would equal infinite growth which
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HIV is a right bastard of a virus. Mutates like crazy. Coronaviruses are easier: Scientists already know how to make vaccines for coronaviruses, and so so on a regular basis. The challenge here isn't making a vaccine, it's making a vaccine in record-setting time.
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You really have not understood _why_ the curve was flattened? That is impressive. Alternatively, you just do not care about a lot of people dying that do not have to yet, and that makes you a dangerous psycho.
Dateline 2026 (Score:5, Funny)
News flash: Researchers in Finland have determined that a combination of the two open-source drugs flavixomifluoropriine and amoxocyclochlorquam are able to completely cure the deadly COBOLA-25 virus in 98% of patients.
Unfortunately, since the former is licensed under the GPL, and the latter under the CDDL, the two medications cannot be combined in one patient. Pandemic experts are concerned that millions more are going to die as a result. Efforts are underway to relicense one or both of these drugs, but tracking down the hundreds of contributors to get them to reassign their IP rights is proving to be very difficult.
The problem with medicine isn't lack of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: The problem with medicine isn't lack of ideas (Score:2)
I'll wait for 1.0.1 or better
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It could work if all the countries in the world would contribute to an organization like this, giving them the funds to do so.
Instead of paying the big pharma corps like they do now.
How is that different? (Score:2)
The summary says it's already being done that way for this pandemic. If we'd had the "Open Source" stuff in place earlier it would have saved ... a few days? Two weeks?
The last big pandemic was 100 years ago. So the plan is to create this structure to save some small number of days every 25 or 50 or 100 years when there's a pandemic?
Do it because it makes sense all the time. Or don't because it doesn't. Don't do anything because it will save a few days in 2093 or whenever there's a new pandemic.
I doubt it (Score:2)
That may all be true, but FOSS mindset helps... (Score:2)
If there are cheap and easy and non-proprietary solutions to use out there (e.g. perhaps baking soda to blunt severe immune responses via the spleen, licorice as a preventive antiviral, etc.) then big pharma is unlikely to invest in their study compared to proprietary treatments. At least inexpensive and relatively safe ivermectin is getting a trial (because one was underway already for a somewhat similar use and was repurposed). Eating better in general (a variety of whole foods, mostly plants), exercise,
Back in my day we just funded Public Uni (Score:2)
So yeah, Open Source Medicine works fine and has existed for ages. We just stopped doing it because nobody wanted to pay the taxes to get it.
Re: Back in my day we just funded Public Uni (Score:3)
Then when they made discoveries we didn't let private companies patent them and sell them back to us.
Right, instead the university patented it and licensed it to private industry.
I've never heard of a drug discovery that went 'straight to generic' out of the labratory.
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Is the concern how much it costs or when it is first available? You seem to misunderstand the motivation.
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I've never heard of a drug discovery that went 'straight to generic' out of the labratory.
look up Jonas Salk, no patent on the pollio vaccine, anybody could make it.
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OK, that's one, but I dare say it's the only one I've heard of.
My point was, and remains, patenting university discoveries is not some new phenomenon.
If a govt researcher in a govt lab discovers the vaccine, us law makes it public domain.
If a private researcher in a privately-funded lab discovers the vaccine, they can patent it or not - their choice.
If a university researcher in a university lab discovers the vaccine, the university gets to decide about the patent.
Thank (or not) the Bayh-Dole Act for the shift (Score:2)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma... [theatlantic.com] ...
"Commercially sponsored research is putting at risk the paramount value of higher education -- disinterested inquiry. Even more alarming, the authors argue, universities themselves are behaving more and more like for-profit companies.
In rushing to forge alliances with industry, universities are not just responding to economic necessity -- they are also capitalizing on a change in federal law, implemented nearly two decades ago, that laid the foundat
Impractical (Score:2)
From https://opensource.com/open-so... [opensource.com]
Transparency. Currently, biology is not transparent, simply because it requires significant skill and education to understand what is going on. While one can be as transparent as possible, we're still having to do black-box testing simply because there will be unexpected conflicts. In contrast, open source programs don't need such rigor to that degree.
Collaboration. While collaboration is possible, only people who are trained in the task can collaborate. In contrast, i
Probably not (Score:2)
Since the major impedement to preparing for future pandemics is the willingness of the national government to prepare for it. All the open-source medicine in the world won't change that.
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Since the major impedement to preparing for future pandemics is the willingness of the national government to prepare for it. All the open-source medicine in the world won't change that.
How is any action of any national government required to prepare for an epidemic? President Trump didn't close down the nation over COVID-19, he left that to the states. Even then it doesn't take a state government to act, a city can decide to close down buses and other public transit to prevent the spread of disease. That level of government isn't required either. Once people realized that staying home, using masks, social distancing, and so on prevented the spread of disease then families and business
LAMP stack analogy, more homebrew technology (Score:1)
I saw that mention of a LAMP stack in the article with the argument that drugs don't work like software, you can't have half a drug. I'm not so sure, drugs can stack like software to make something that anyone of them cannot do alone.
We will see a lot of debate on the effectiveness of hydrochloroquine against COVID-19. What I recall is that alone hydrochloroquine is not all that effective but with a zinc supplement and an antibiotic the results are quite promising. As I understand it the hydrochloroquine
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While most of your comment is insightful, you really go off on a slippery slope argument at the end there.
Your comparison between home drug manufacturing and home gun manufacturing is an excellent one, since the people who might be for one are unlikely to be for the other (aside from the exception of libertarians and anarchists). Plus, this issue is worth considering in the context of open source medicine, since it really opens up the door for people to create and use their own therapies, as you point out.
O
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So as long as the uranium supply can be controlled
That's the point, there is no controlling the uranium supply.
There's uranium in sea salt, so anyone that can suck water out of the sea can get uranium. There's uranium in beach and river sand, in coal ash, in granite countertops, in clay bricks, and in ceramic plates. There's uranium all over the place so there is no controlling the uranium supply.
Even if you have uranium ore, it's very radioactive, which makes it both hard to handle and easy to detect, and it takes a lot of expertise and effort to make refined material out of it, before you even start doing anything more with it.
Uranium is not very radioactive or all that difficult to handle. The half-life of most uranium isotopes, and certainly any of those that can be found in nature
Which authority will adopt any open source cure? (Score:1)
Great Target (Score:1)
Re: Great Target (Score:3)
Hearing reports that the Wuhan laboratory tried to patent Remdisavir (sp?) [lmgtfy.com]
What? (Score:2)
When did scientists sharing information to combat a serious threat become something new? As a reminder, how did we fight HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS, H1N1Swine Flu, etc?
Also, be careful about that Linux analogy, remember Linux fork'd itself into irrelevance (in the desktop market - more people run Windows ME than Linux, all distros, in desktops).
Oh God, not this again.... (Score:2)
No. The answer is "No".
What will help the next pandemic, is a technocracy.
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Ya. No. (Score:2)