The Tropical Disease Initiative

Open source drug discovery, a promising alternative avenue to conventional patent-based drug development, has so far remained elusive with few exceptions. A major stumbling block has been the absence of a critical mass of preexisting work that volunteers can improve through a series of granular contributions. This database introduces the results from a newly assembled computational pipeline for identifying protein targets for drug discovery in ten organisms that cause tropical diseases.  The resulting kernel provides a base of drug targets and lead candidates around which an open source community can nucleate. We invite visitors to donate their judgment and in silico and in vitro experiments to develop these targets to the point where drug optimization can begin. We hope that the kernel will facilitate collaborative efforts towards the discovery of new drugs against parasites that cause tropical diseases.