The Synaptic Leap

New Approach to Open Contributions Experiment at Google

Check out Google's Highly Open Participation Contest. They are trying to create an open task list approach to getting help from people who want to help but don't know quite how to get started. Drupal, the open source content management application we use here at TSL is one of the projects involved. Here's the Drupal project page for GHOP. And here's a list of open tasks for Drupal.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr Mat Todd appeared on Open Source internet radio station KFUU.fm.

The interview (MP3) has yet to be uploaded but should be in the coming weeks.

Source:-

http://www.kruufm.com/open-views-matthew-todd-synaptic-leap-7pm-tu-7am-th

Barry Bunin, a registered user here at TSL and CEO of CDD, is presenting at the upcoming BioScience Forum on April 18. If you're in the SF Bay area, it looks like an interesting meeting to attend.

The material below is from a press release issued in July 2004 by the American Chemical Society.

And as a side note -- cinnamon oil contains 2-phenylacetaldehyde. 

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) contains acetaldehyde.  Therefore one wonders if witch hazel poured onto watery places where mosquitoes might breed, whether it would act as a larvicide too.

[ En francais -- Le matériel ci-dessous, c'est un communiqué de presse publié juillet 2004 par la société chimique américaine.

Et penser également, peut-être -- l'essence de cannelle contient "2-phenylacetaldehyde."

TDR has just produced the following new publication:

Lessons learned in Home Management of Malaria -
Implementation research in four African countries
http://www.who.int/tdr/publications/publications/lessons_hmm.htm

If you wish to receive a printed copy of it, please send an email to:
mailto:tdr@who.int or to mailto:bruyerejm@who.int

Dear TSL Members,

You are invited to the first annual QB3-UCSF-CDD developing world disease research community meeting scheduled for March 5^th 2007 at the UCSF Mission Bay Campus (details below and attached).  The collaborative community includes leading experts on developing world infectious disease research from Stanford, UCSF, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UW, SBRI, St. Jude CRH, U. Penn, Univ. of Sydney, and industry too.  

Collaborative Drug Discovery
First Annual Community Meeting

Monday, March 5^th 2007 1:00-6:00 pm; Auditorium: J. David Gladstone Institute (1^st Floor)

Hosted by Gladstone Institute and QB3 at the UCSF, Mission Bay Campus

Two major themes of this event are:

1)      Public-Private-Partnerships for Global Health Issues
2)      “Open” concepts for Collaborative Drug Discovery

Confirmed Speakers:
 

• Dr. Christopher Lipinski, Pfizer, retired. (Keynote presentation)
  
• Jim McKerrow, Professor, Dept. of Pathology, QB3 - UCSF
  
• Matt Bogyo, Professor, Dept. of Pathology, Stanford Medical School
  
• Andrej Sali, Professor, Dept of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, QB3 - UCSF
  
• Dr. Anang Shelat, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
  
• David Roos, Biology Professor, Univ. of Penn tentatively confirmed (Director, Penn Genomics Institute).

Symposium – Coffee/Snacks – Demos – Posters – Networking – Wine Reception

Registration is free. To register contact/RSVP to: kgregory@collaborativedrug.com.

Bernard Munos, from Eli Lilly, wrote a very thorough article on open and collaborative research for neglected diseases and it was just published at Nature: Can open-source R&D reinvigorate drug research. What I particularly like about the article are the details he provides in describing how he thinks pharmaceutical companies can and should participate in the process.

Let's face it; we're in uncharted territory. We don't really KNOW how it's going to work. We're in the midst of a big evolving experimental process.

My vision for how it will work tends to be a bit more grass roots, less centralized group driving the process. Collaborative process tools like a Gene Wiki will enable dedicated experts to suggest work for less involved volunteers to contribute. People will collaborate with the people they trust and trust must be earned. 

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interesting article, Gates Won't Fund Aids Research Unless They Pool Data. My summary and commentary on that aricle:

The Gates Foundation is awarding $287M over 5 years to 165 researchers from 19 countries and they are requiring the recipients to share their data. A few very important quotes from the article:

• "Through such data sharing, Dr. Hellmann says, rival teams can build on successes, avoid pitfalls and eliminate redundancy." Dr. Hellmann is the interim HIV projects director at the Gates Foundation.
• "Enforced data sharing, Dr. Self predicted, "increases the pace of discovery enormously rather than waiting for the process of writing formal journal articles, waiting for them to be published, and [confirmed] by other labs." Steve Self is a a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

What is particiularly significant about this is that the Gates Foundation is doing this with Aids, a disease that is not exclusive to tropical regions. There is a profit to be made here. Regardless, this aliance demonstrates that ...' the large enterprise is more important than the position I keep by holding my data close,' (another quote from Steve Self). It appears that the data will be shared across grant recipients and not necessarily wide open on the web. Regardless it's a big step.

They weren't very clear on how they will allow these organizations to profit from their discoveries. However Gates is clearly on the record of respecting intellectual property and the rights to profits.

Open, but not as usual mentions both Tropical Disease Initiative and The Synaptic Leap.

...Other projects, such as the Tropical Disease Initiative and the Synaptic Leap, are forming along similar lines. Synaptic Leap points out that because it is not motivated by profit, it has no motive to keep secret any fruits derived from collaboration in research on, for example, malaria....

It's nice to see us in the news of such a credible magazine. I've long been a fan of The Economist as the best way to get news with a minimum US bias. Both Stephen Maurer and Arti Rai, our advisors and founding members of Tropical Disease Initiatve, have contacts at The Economist. I assume that is how they have heard of us. 

Anyway, nice to see our name in print. I must admit I did a little dance. 

European Parliament Hearing on Neglected Diseases - European Public Health Alliance:
The hearing seeks to highlight the need for better regulatory practices which are more suitably adapted to assessing therapeutic advances of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for neglected diseases. These diseases include AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, leishmansis, Chagas disease and sleeping sickness.