I got up this morning at 5 am and found this very interesting talk by Jay Bradner from Harvard on Facebook.
He talks about the Open-source research for developing new cancer drugs and how it can change the world.
His idea was simple. His lab developed a prototype compound that might work to cure a rare cancer. But instead of keeping this secret, he published this compound and gave it to the world for free and asked people around the world if they wanted to test it.
Interestingly by sharing with the world, which pharma companies won’t do it this point of drug development, he received results with new insight of cancer research.
Other labs found that the prototype compound was also active on other cancers as well, for example leukemia cells treated with the prototype compound turned in to normal white blood cells. Great!
This was an unique idea for research and drug discovery which was only been seen previously in the Information Technology.
In India, where resources are not as accessible as developed world, open-source research can help create new environment and opportunities for the research. Specially when there is less money is available for research and all money is public money.
This will also save money and will create better use of limited medical technology resources in India in short period of time. In addition of that more knowledge will spread and confidence will develop to do high quality research.
Amit
Here is the talk from Jay Bradner if you are interested in watching.
True Yogis should renounce worldly pleasures, give food and shelters to poors, but not like Baba Ramdev, who flies in private jets to start anti-corruption campaign.
Anna Hajare might have true intentions to cure corruption in India but having ally like Baba only hurts his campaign.