The Indian scientists, for the first time, have mapped a Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) genome, which may result in developing more effective drugs to fight the bug that causes TB, a disease which kills 1.7 million people annually.
This is the first time that a comprehensive mapping of the Mtb genome has been compiled, verified and made publicly available. This is the result of the government's Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) initiative and the results of its 'Connect 2 Decode' (C2D) project to re-annotate the biological and genetic information relating to the Mtb genome.C2D's findings may contain critical data to unlock previously undiscovered details of tuberculosis (TB); resulting in development opportunities for urgently needed new TB drugs in India and other developing countries.
"As virtually no new TB drugs have been developed since the 1960s, OSDD's model in particular holds great promise for the scientific community by stimulating the development of better drugs and diagnostics for patients," said Dr Samir Brahmachari, scientist and director general of the Indian organisation Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
"We need to have a balanced view between health as a right and health as a business. It is because there has been imbalance in this view, that diseases like TB with high mortality but low profitability are neglected by the current system of pharmaceutical research," Dr Brahmachari added.
In addition, conventional market-based patent incentives are ineffective in addressing public health needs in developing countries with only 1 per cent of newly developed drugs targeting neglected diseases.
With children and people living with HIV in India and other developing countries bearing the greatest burden of the disease, as well as the emergence and spread of TB that is resistant to treatment by the standard anti-TB drugs, there is an urgent global, but unanswered, need for new drugs.
According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, 1.7 million people die annually from TB and that in some areas of the world, one in four people with TB becomes ill with a form of the disease that can no longer be treated with standard drugs regimens. Despite this public health emergency, TB research funding remains alarmingly inadequate, particularly for research into new drugs.
"For us the irony is that with the availability of drugs for HIV and particularly of safe and affordable Indian generics, we are living with HIV but dying of TB," Loon Gangte of the Delhi Network of Positive People, a support group of people living with HIV/AIDS, said. "TB research has yet to see any great progress as we struggle to pull ourselves out of a system that places profits before people's lives. India's OSDD project holds immense hope for my community."
Under the C2D project, researchers and students pooled their time and skills using online tools to provide insights into 4000 genes of the deadly pathogen. The researchers also mapped the genes as they relate to functional interactions and pathways. Their work is held in a shared database, which OSDD will share through a globally accessible database to any research institutions involved in TB research through its open portal (www.osdd.net).
C2D demonstrates the power of people to connect through the internet, particular young people, and accomplish complex research tasks. It is also a distinct move from a hierarchical based model of doing science towards one of equal collaboration.
OSDD was launched in September 2008 by CSIR. It is a US$ 35 million (Rs 146 crore) collaborative research effort that focuses primarily on TB. OSDD's objective is to accelerate R&D for TB drugs. With a global community of nearly 3000 members from 74 countries, OSDD brings together scientists, doctors, students, policy experts, software professionals and others to work on TB research.