Understanding and creating value from open source drug discovery for neglected tropical diseases

The health commons (known as open source) refers to knowledge-based assets that are shared or owned in common by stakeholders found across the health value chain. The unique challenges presented to drug discovery and development including biological, chemical and economic are particularly salient for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), warranting new networks and models of open collaboration between scientists from the public and private sectors.

The goal of this paper is to progress beyond the review of open source strategies NTDs to a discussion of an assessment of these strategies. The authors discuss the notion of evolving openness across the pharmaceutical value chain and discuss and develop a framework for assessing the value and outcomes of open source drug discovery for NTDs, based on the available literature.

Collectively, open source programs for NTDs, beyond the actual deposits themselves, should foster linkages between experts in key disease arenas, encourage collaborations through such linkages and most urgently enable human capacity development. Quantifying their value in absolute terms is not an easy task since exchange markets do not always exist for deposited and shared assets. From the perspective of capacity development, the potential and benefits certainly exist for program development involving NTD initiatives, institutions and students in disease-endemic countries. Here, stakeholders such as public grant agencies and private sector sponsors can play a role in encouraging initiatives that link open and broad knowledge dissemination to the development of local human and technological capacity in NTD-endemic countries.