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Updated: Jan 5, 2026

Drug Repurposing Hypothesis Generation Using the "RE:fine Drugs" System
Published on: December 11, 2016
Six Laws of Open Source Drug Discovery
1School of Pharmacy, University College London, 29-39 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AX, London, UK.
Abstract:
Six to swear by! Society needs effective and affordable medicines. We currently have at our disposal essentially one system to discover and develop drugs, and there are many areas where this system struggles to deliver, for example to combat antimicrobial resistance, or tropical diseases, or dementia. It is sensible to cultivate alternative, competing approaches to drug discovery and development. A genuinely new alternative is to open up the entire research cycle, abandoning secrecy altogether. This "open source" approach has now been trialed and the lessons learned distilled to six laws of operation that help to clarify working practices. This article examines and explains those laws, which can be adopted by anyone wishing to create medicines using an inclusive, public process.
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