Crowdsourcing Scientific Research: Leveraging the Crowd for Scientific Discovery

If it can be done in TB research - it can certainly be done for clinical trials design.

http://www.crowdsourcing.org/video/fortune-and-biewald-crowdsourcing-tb-cell-annotation-/8433

TLS at Open Science Summit 2011

Listen to the podcast at:

http://mendelspod.com/podcast/openscience

Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

A great accomplishment of crowd-sourcing. The gamers were challenged in a focused way, and well curated. This is what is possible, and it is only a beginning.

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-161920724.html

 

 

Social networking rallies volunteers in Mayo Clinic study

This story focuses on patient recruitment; Transparency LS goes a few steps further by asking patients to co-design the study protocol. Stay tuned for updates!

http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/social-networking-rallies-volunteers-mayo-clinic-study/2011-08-31?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

WSJ on Crowdsourcing Deficit Reduction

An article in The Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904716604576542472754782288.html

One notable quote which is relevant to Transparency:

>>For his part, Mr. Goel said "people always underestimate the power of crowdsourcing," or using a large group of people to complete a task. He cites the prolific online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which relies on individuals to create the content.<<

... if this can be done, there is no reason why a crowd sourced clinical study protocol can not be send to the regulatory authorities...

http://opensource.com/government/11/8/crowdsourced-icelandic-constitution-submitted-parliament?sc_cid=70160000000TdpmAAC

Crowdsourced Icelandic constitution submitted to parliament

Transparency featured at BioPharma Physicians blog

http://www.biopharmphysicians.com/crowd-sourcing-in-clinical-development/

NIH on Crowdsourcing: The Art and Science of Open Innovation

This one day (July 18th 2011) event organized by the NIH is now available for viewing

http://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents.asp

Open-source start-up Transparency LS lands seed funding

CHICAGO -- Open-source drug development upstart Transparency Life Sciences has "raised a small seed round" of funding. It's using the funds to build an Internet presence, says Tomasz Sablinski, head of clinical development at private equity concern Celtic Therapeutics, in an interview at the recent DIA show. Sablinski also is founder of TLS.
New co-founders include Marc Foster, a biotech IT entrepreneur and president at tech startup catalyst Foster & Roberts, and Larry Steinman of Stanford University's Beckman Center for Molecular Medicine.
The Internet presence will be a space for like-minded open-source drug developers to create and work on projects.  Sablinski says he plans to officially launch TLS in the next few months with one drug development pilot project and then add subsequent projects. His goal is a "robust portfolio" by year's end.
Sablinski has been the chief champion of TLS, advocating not just open-source software but drug development as a whole. He questions whether drug development can be a viable business without using open source, and whether Big Pharma is capable of making the transition.
TLS is "more on the trajectory of a web-based company than a biotech. And I'm looking for similarly fast ROI by being transparent," Sablinski says. He adds that other companies have signed on with TLS and that several partnerships are in the works. Among these joiners are "traditional and nontraditional companies in biopharma drug development."


Read more: Open-source start-up TLS lands seed funding - FierceBiotechIT http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/open-source-start-tls-lands-seed-funding/2011-07-04#ixzz1SNkstZea
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Life Science Leaders article on Crowdsourcing Drug Development

This article (page 22) discusses the need of different models for clinical studies and features prominently the Transparency Life Sciences model.http://digital.lifescienceleadermag.com/link/lslead/2011/jul/1?s=0


“The obvious place to start is finding new clinical indications and
uses for generic drugs. We already know a lot about their modes of
actions and their safety profiles, and repurposing them for other indi-
cations has a higher probability of success than developing new or
novel drugs.”
Tomasz Sablinski, M.D., Ph.D., managing director at Celtic Therapeutics

Pfizer's virtual trial: Open-source meets old pharma

Pfizer's virtual trial: Open-source meets old pharma

By gmiller

Created Jun 21 2011 - 12:02am

CHICAGO -- Drug giant Pfizer revealed more details of its all-electronic clinical trial [1] at the DIA's 47^th annual show here, going to great lengths to acknowledge its partners in the endeavor and to credit collaboration for the achievements to date.
The news sounds big coming from a big pharma, especially given that the FDA is onboard. Pfizer's head of clinical innovation Craig Lipset took pains to appreciate the regulatory and Institutional Review Board input his project has received. And he acknowledged the contributions of partners Steven Cummings of Mytrus, which provided the front-end tech build-out of the investigator sites; Cameron Robertson, business development manager at Exco intouch, provider of the mobile e-diary equipment; Perceptive Informatics, for its back-end technology work; and the University of California investigational team.
"It's hardly Pfizer's technology," said Lipset, sounding less like a Big Pharma practitioner and more like an open source advocate. "We don't believe Pfizer owns this approach. We want to see greater uptake in the wider community." He said he believes the model can scale internally and perhaps eventually be used as modules in conventional studies in a form of "disruptive new medicine."
His words are strikingly similar to those of Tomasz Sablinski, head of clinical development at private equity concern Celtic Therapeutics, in a FierceBiotech IT interview [2] last February: "If you want to introduce disruptive [technology], you have to go out on your own," he said. "You can't do it from within." Sablinski in his spare time is launching Transparency Life Sciences, an open-source drug development enterprise.
Both Sablinski and Lipset acknowledge the great contribution to be made by telemedicine, with apps that are "growing at the speed of light" yet rarely used in pharma [Sablinski], and an "app store of tools from telemedicine, which can help expand health IT connectivity." [Lipset] sees the use of telemedicine apps in clinical trials as "a repurposing rather than inventing." On the innovation behind his project, Lipset says, "there are two approaches a company like Pfizer can take. One is private, to hide it. We took the more challenging way--with qualification, regulators, the IRB. They're all partners now."
Sablinski for the most part agrees with Lipset. But he has one quibble: "Pfizer concocted the trial in secrecy; the old way." He implies the drug giant worked on the effort for months internally before reaching out to others. To extrapolate what Pfizer did to a truly transparent model, the drugmaker would have spoken up earlier and said to the larger community of stakeholders, "we want to conduct an all-electronic trial. How do we design it?"
But he's not complaining. "For me, [the Pfizer project] is a godsend." If it succeeds, it validates his concept for the fledgling open-source Transparency Life Sciences. - George Miller (email [3])

• DIA
• electronic clinical trial
• Pfizer

---

Source URL: http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/pfizers-virtual-trial-open-source-meets-old-pharma/2011-06-21

ALS Study Shows Social Media's Value as Research Tool

This article published in today's WSJ provides an important support for a new paradigm in clinical development. Although there were significant shortcomings, which would be obvious to anyone familiar with drug development process, the table at the end of the story is self explanatory. It does not take a financial guru to see what the advantage will be if you manage to save so much time and money in the process as this trial achieved, while introducing proper scientific scrutiny. This is what Transparency Life Sciences is about.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704489604576283010994997034.html?mod=djemHL_t

Open Source Biology Deserves a Shot

an interesting piece about even more interesting initiative...

http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/04/11/open-source-biology-deserves-a-shot/

Fierce Biotech on Transparency LS: Necessity driving leery pharma "open"

April 4, 2011 — 7:30am ET | By George Miller 

Read more: Necessity driving leery pharma "open" - FierceBiotechIT http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/necessity-driving-leery-pharma-open/2011-04-04?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal#ixzz1IeSnbDHB 

Subscribe: http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/signup?sourceform=Viral-Tynt-FierceBiotechIT-FierceBiotechITPHOENIX -- It's almost as if the topic were taboo: the open-source concept in drug development gets little play in the agenda at the Partnerships in Clinical Trials conference. The topic had a way of coming up, though.

When it comes to open-source drug R&D, "the clinical side is the conservative side," says Ken Getz, senior research fellow at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. But the downturn in the economy has stimulated thinking among big pharmas.

"A cultural shift is happening as companies downsize in some cases," he says. Success in open-source development efforts, perhaps first in translational medicine, "will lead to changes that are profound," says Getz.

Let's hope so. "This is an industry in deep, deep crisis," says Tomasz Sablinski, managing director at Celtic Therapeutics and the chief force behind Transparency Life Sciences, a fledgling open-source drug development enterprise. "It's not going to be saved by tweaking."

He says pharma's increasing use of outsourcing is merely a shifting of money within the same financially inefficient system. "Pharma is unhappy now; CROs are happy," he says. "CROs will become unhappy."

Sablinsky's open-source idea, as we've reported, involves contributions of compounds, computer code and drug development expertise as well as collaborations with patient-engagement web sites like Cure Together and use of telemedicine apps for clinical trial monitoring.

Clearly the idea is gaining some traction in drug development. Open-source clinical trial software OpenClinica, maintained by Akaza Research, now boasts more than 11,000 users. That's a 10-percent rise from last July, when the company announced a three-fold increase over the previous two years. 

Read more: Necessity driving leery pharma "open" - FierceBiotechIT http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/necessity-driving-leery-pharma-open/2011-04-04?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal#ixzz1IeSOkUv6
Subscribe: http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/signup?sourceform=Viral-Tynt-FierceBiotechIT-FierceBiotechIThttp://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/necessity-driving-leery-pharma-open/2011-04-04?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

Nature Biotech on crowdsourcing

a very good overview of current applications and outlook for the future... sadly only available to the subscribers...

The power of many

• Clare Sansom

Nature Biotechnology

 

29,

 

201–203

 

(2011)

 

doi:10.1038/nbt.1792

Published online

 

09 March 2011

Applications of crowdsourcing in commercial biotech remain few and far between, but the approach is proving increasingly popular for solving challenges in basic research. Clare Sansom reports.

Transparency LS in the news: FierceBiotechIT

http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/open-rd-challenges-big-pharma-innovation/2011-02-10

Open R&D challenges big pharma innovation

February 10, 2011 — 6:13pm ET | By George Miller

Read more: Open R&D challenges big pharma innovation - FierceBiotechIT http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/open-rd-challenges-big-pharma-innovation/2011-02-10#ixzz1Di5tnWMy
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Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & rs or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b2e1aFina "The future of pharma will probably look more like the peer-reviewed open process....

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b2e1aa6-33d6-11e0-b1ed-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=crm/email/201129/nbe/DrugsHealthcare/product#axzz1DSr7xvtx

wouldn't you agree?

Citizen Science Genomics as a Model for Crowdsourced Preventive Medicine Research

Journal of Participatory Medicine:

http://www.jopm.org/evidence/research/2010/12/23/citizen-science-genomics-as-a-model-for-crowdsourced-preventive-medicine-research/

Crowdsourcing Drug Discovery

This article http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57646/ published in The Scientist last September suggests some radical solutions which Transparency Life Sciences is implemeting. Patient driven trials - yes!