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Open Source Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the oldest diseases to affect humans and is the second most deadly infectious disease, second only to covid-19. Caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, TB can be successfully treated with a range of antibiotics, with rifampicin, ethambutol, isoniazid and pyrazinamide typically used as first line therapy. Unfortunately, drug resistant strains of tuberculosis are becoming increasingly common, with over 100,000 cases of drug resistant TB (DR-TB) and 25,000 cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) being reported in 2021.
Tuberculosis is classified as a neglected tropical disease by the WHO, meaning that it is a disease that largely affects impoverished communities. These diseases often receive less funding for research and progress in developing treatments and prevention can be much slower than in diseases that affect wealthier people. Open Source Tuberculosis aims to help address this gap by identifying and optimising new antibiotics that are effective against drug resistant strains of TB.
The drug discovery process can take many years and requires collaboration from many scientists in different disciplines. We hope to speed up this process by following the principles of Open Science, which include making our work freely accessible and collaborating with other researchers from around the world. Our hope is that this will make our work more efficient and allow us to find solutions to issues that affect humanity more rapidly. You can read more about Open Science drug discovery methods here.
The Open Source Tuberculosis project brings together different researchers who want to work within the ethos of open science. Discussion is centred on the GitHub. This PhD work explores Series 4, which is based on cyclam and open-cyclam (linear amines) - more details on this series can be found here.