The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)'s 'Open Source Drug Discovery' (OSDD) programme is now expanding its drug experimental capabilities. In this regard it is scouting for contract research organizations (CROs) across the country to pursue studies on tuberculosis.

According to officials at the CSIR, there is need to validate and tap the ever increasing computational and experimental leads. The Council is now looking at organizations which have the adequate infrastructure for drug discovery.

Presently tuberculosis is undertaken by AstraZeneca, Lupin, Cipla and Torrent. There are several generic drug players also. TB is the leading cause of death from bacterial infection. WHO reports that one-third of the world's population is currently infected with the dreaded disease.

According to the World Health Organization, Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) cases in India at 63,000. India ranks second among the 27 MDR-TB high-burden countries worldwide after China.

The Union government’s report on the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNCTP) brought out by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated that ending 2011, 38,287 suspected cases were examined of which 10,267 were  diagnosed with MDR-TB and 6,994 administered treatment.

The estimated incidence of TB in India is 1.8 million new cases annually with an estimated 370,000 deaths due to TB occurring each year - over 1,000 deaths a day, or 2 TB deaths every 3 minutes.

The current TB therapy was developed in the 1960s and there has been no major advancement in treatment. Of the 1,556 new chemical entities marketed worldwide, between 1975 and 2004, only three were for TB. The presently used drugs, with standard therapeutic duration of 6-9 months, - Isoniazid, Rifampicin, Pyrazinamide and Ethambutol which require careful monitoring if drug resistance is to be avoided.

The MDR-TB takes longer to treat with second-line drugs, which are more expensive and have stronger side-effects. Extensively drug-resistant (XDR)-TB can develop when these second-line drugs are misused or mismanaged and available therapy therefore also become ineffective. Because XDR-TB is resistant to first- and second-line drugs, treatment options are seriously limited, stated a specialists from the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases.

The OSDD was introduced by CSIR in 2008 has launched an innovative system to combat infectious diseases that afflict the developing world. OSDD is a CSIR-led consortium with global partnerships to provide affordable healthcare especially to the weaker sections of global populations.

With the global economic slow down resulting in drying of funding options in the developing countries has impacted big pharmaceutical companies from developing drugs for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, among others. Moreover, these drug discovery projects have long gestation period, incur huge R&D costs and come of with low success rate. These diseases affect the economically backward sections  of the population and this is where the OSDD model is being viewed as a viable alternate model of drug discovery for infectious diseases, stated Prof. Samir K Brahmachari, director general, CSIR

The key features of OSDD are its expansion of resources by allowing open access and, incentives to contribute to the co-operative effort. OSDD is based on three principles of collaboration, sharing and discovering. It aims to bring openness and collaborative spirit to the drug discovery process with the objective of keeping drug cost low, he added.

CSIR provide data on the pathogens, tools for data analysis, and discussion forum for members to share ideas, projects for students to participate in drug discovery.