Sydney researchers have thrown open the notoriously secretive process of drug discovery with a world-first attempt to develop a malaria medicine through crowdsourcing.
Chemists from the University of Sydney explored the potential for two antimalarial compounds to be synthesised into drugs, by encouraging the scientific community to contribute data and expertise, and publishing the results online.
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Associate Professor Matthew Todd said the open source process - which is common in software development - had been used to screen for diseases such as zika and ebola but it was unique to develop a drug with complete transparency.
"No one's done this with drug discovery, where you would normally expect it to be done in secrecy," Associate Professor Todd said.
![Malaria is spread by mosquitoes.](/web/20160916104138im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/l/3/f/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grg22h.png/1473931519610.jpg)
"We were seeing whether people would jump in or keep their distance, and people really did jump in from across the spectrum - people from the private sector as well as academics from around the world."
Malaria is one of the world's most deadly diseases, with 438,000 deaths in 2015, and there is emerging resistance to the only effective treatment.
The mosquito-borne infectious disease is widespread in tropical and sub-tropical regions, with 214 million cases in 2015.
The pharmaceutical industry has little commercial incentive to develop a new drug and academic researchers lack the resources to convert compounds that have been identified as potential treatments into medicines.
![A Medecines Sans Frontieres (MSF) health worker tests villagers for malaria in South Sudan.](/web/20160916104138im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/o/u/5/z/5/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grg22h.png/1473931519610.jpg)
But the growing urgency to find a new drug has promoted some unorthodox solutions to the impasse.
The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline released 13,533 structures of possible drugs into the public domain in 2012, which Associate Professor Todd's group used as a starting point in the hunt for a cure.
![University of Sydney Associate Professor Matthew Todd.](/web/20160916104138im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/g/q/i/i/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.grg22h.png/1473931519610.jpg)
The large scale release of such data was unprecedented in the pharmaceutical industry, where intellectual property is closely guarded to maintain a competitive edge, but other companies have since followed suit.
It ticks the box for social responsibility, generates positive publicity in an often-demonised industry and there is little to lose financially because for third-world diseases are never going to be money-spinners.
GSK and all the participants to Associate Professor Todd's project agreed not to seek patents on any resulting drugs.
Associate Professor Todd said he expected scientists might be reticent about contributing to his project because without a patent there was no guaranteed funding for a clinical trial, but they were enthusiastic about participating and provided valuable advice.
Representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has contributed more than $40 billion to malaria research, have previously told him that they believe the private sector will be a more reliable path to developing a drug.
But he ended up "parking" the project when the molecules did not appear promising. The results are published in ACS Central Science to deter other scientists from studying them again - which is another unorthodox practice in scientific literature, where many researchers prefer only to publish positive results.
"Negative data doesn't get published and that's a real problem. This is one of the great things about open source."
GSK corporate affairs head Bernadette Murdoch said the company was committed to helping people access medicines regardless of their ability to pay.
"The cost [of research and development] is incredibly high, so what we've done is come up with many different ways to develop medicines and vaccines."