OSDD: A Journey Through Unchartered Waters

I will be stepping down from the post of Project Director, OSDD, upon completion of my deputation to Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), on 31^st March 2014, and repatriating back to my cadre, Indian Revenue Service.

For those who are unaware of the background, a few lines. In India, civil servants are chosen at the entry level into specific services, and are trained in that area, They remain in those services (called cadres) for their career. However, government allows its officers to move to other departments for specific periods, on deputation. I belong to the Indian Revenue Service and I came to CSIR on deputation to lead the OSDD project as its project director. My period of deputation ends on 31^st March, 2014.

The warm welcome I got on my walking into CSIR on 6^th of August, 2008, did only increase overtime. During these five years I had the opportunity to interact closely with many brilliant minds in India and abroad, the leaders of science in India, and with the OSDD community and its committed members. It has been a rare honour.

Immediately upon joining CSIR, I had plunged into the pre launch activities of OSDD with two wonderful colleagues, Dr Anshu Bhardwaj and Dr Vinod Scaria, of course under the leadership of Prof S K Brahmachari who had conceived the idea and convinced the government to fund the program. Dr Anshu had joined even before me and had done lot of work. There was a small but highly committed team brought together by Prof Brahmachari comprising of: Dr Ramachandran, Dr Debasis Dash, Dr. Jyoti Yadav, Dr  Bhupesh Taneja, all scientists from IGIB, Dr Andrew Lynn from JNU and Dr Jajit Bhattacharya, an open source proponent and technocrat, then with Sun Microsystems. We all had one common intention, make OSDD a success and find new drugs for Tuberculosis (TB), which was identified as the first target disease. 

OSDD was launched on September 15, 2008 by the then Minister for Science and Technology, Mr Kapil Sibal. Mr Sibal in his speech referred to the 90-10, problem that 90% of the resources of the pharmaceutical industry goes to the diseases affecting 10%of the population of the world and stressed on the need to find new drugs for TB.  Prof Brahmachari fielded questions and exuded confidence. However, there was lot of skepticism in the air too. One senior pharmaceutical industry executive had laughed at the idea of OSDD and predicted it will never work.

It is now a global community of more than 8000 members from 130 countries. More than 100 institutions are collaborating on OSDD. At any point in time OSDD has about 100 PIs doing different projects. It is now a virtual drug discovery platform based on the open source principles.

The OSDD journey has been exciting at every step. It has all along been through unchartered waters. The initial skepticism has gone and OSDD is part of the global discussions on innovative ways of drug discovery as could be seen from the recommendation of the Expert Working Group and Consultative Expert Working Group of WHO. I am stepping down with the satisfaction that today, the scientific community recognizes OSDD as a serious effort, and the government of India and CSIR are committed to take it forward.

OSDD is now a fully functional translational, trans disciplinary, drug discovery platform.  Each of its component whether in biology, chemistry, medicinal chemistry is supported by strong teams from the community with robust underpinning of computational abilities in all these areas.

Our efforts in biology is to further the understanding of the pathogen and identify and validate novel targets. The systems biology approach is led by Prof Brahmachari, ably supported by Dr Anshu and several researchers. Dr Rajesh Gokhale and Dr Vinay Kumar Nandicoori at NII have been the early experimentalists on Mtb biology. Dr Inshad Ali Khan at CSIR-IIIM, Jammu, Dr Kishore Srivastava, Dr Sudhir K Sinha and Dr Sidharth Chopra at CSIR- CDRI, Lucknow, Dr Urmi Bajpai, Dr Sadhana Sharma both from Delhi University, Dr Niyaz Ahmed from University of Hyderabad, Dr Ashwan Kumar and Dr Pawan Gupta at CSIR IMTECH, Dr Ajay Kumar and Dr Sabu Thomas at RGIB, Trivandrum, Dr Umender Sharma at Gangagen, Dr Ritta Mathew at Bangalore and several others, whose names I have not listed but are significant contributors are adding value to OSDD every day. Prof Samir Brahmachari and Dr Swati Subodh leads the pharmacogenomics activities.

Our biological screening is handled by Ramesh Ummani at Hyderabad, Inshad Ali Khan at Jammu and Kishore Srivastava at Lucknow. Premas Biotech does the industry level screening of identified targets. All these activities are coordinated by Dr Geetha Rayasam ably supported by Dr Anuradha Kumar. 

OSDD has a strong chemistry team coordinated by Dr Haridas Rode. Our aim is to create a diversity oriented chemical library. There are about 90 PIs doing specialized synthesis ably led by Dr Chandrasekar at IICT. You may see the impressive list of lead PIs on the OSDD website http://www.osdd.net/collaborations/lead-pis/synthetic-chemistry OSDD’s medicinal chemistry efforts are led by Dr Bheemrao Ugarkar with his enormous industry experience and with a large community

http://www.osdd.net/collaborations/lead-pis/medicinal-chemistry

We have had the benefit of the leadership of Dr J C Yadav at Dr Ahmad Kamal and Dr Lakshmikantham at IICT, Dr Suresh Das and Dr K V Radhakrishnan at NIIST Trivandrum Dr Ramanna at NCL, Dr Sanjay Batra at CDRI, Dr Parminder Singh at IIIM Jammu and Dr Boruah at NEIST Jorhat. Dr Tushar Chakranorty initiated the academic collaborations. 

The industry partners in Chemistry are Jubilant Chemsys and Phytomyco. We also acquired compounds from commercial libraries. We are also working with GSK Tres Cantos facility.

OSDD’s development efforts are coordinated by Dr Sarala Balachandran. It has the benefit of advice of leaders like Dr N K Ganguli and Dr T S Jawahar. Almost who is who of the TB clinical research community has been associated with OSDD to provide their inputs and peer review. Dr Rohit Sarin, Dr Meyyanedu and Dr Saini at National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases Delhi and Dr Soumya Swaminathan at TRC Chennai are leading the effort.   

It is a matter of pride to India that the clinical trial of a novel TB drug combination is being initiated on the World TB Day, 24 March, 2014. This novel combination of TB drugs is brought to India in collaboration with TB Alliance. This clinical trial is for MDR patients, who desperately need new drugs.  National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, a tertiary care hospital for TB patients, is the Investigator hospital. M/s G V K Biosciences is the Clinical Research Partner.  

OSDD has a strong informatics community coordinated by Dr Anshu Bhardwaj. OSDD's computational work is led from the front by Prof Brahmachari. Its bioinformatics community has all major leaders in the field from Dr G P S Raghava, Dr Vinod Scaria, Dr Ramachandran, Dr Debasis Dash, Dr Nagasuma Chandra, Dr Srinivasan at IISc, Dr Saudamini at NCBS, Dr Andrew Lynn at JNU and several others. There are several international collaborators including Sir Tom Blundell at Cambridge and Dr Kitano at Systems Biology International. The informatics group has engaged a large student research community through novel crowd sourcing efforts. M/s Infosys Ltd is an industry partner. CDAC has been helping with Garuda grid.

The Cheminformatics group include Dr Saurav Pal at NCL, Dr Narahara Sastri, Dr Anshu, Dr Karthikeyan, Dr Jaleel and others. Their international collaborators include Royal Society of Chemistry and renowned researchers like Dr David Wild. 

With the experience gained in working on TB, we have ventured to Malaria under the leadership of Dr Saman Habib who has put together a large team. Collaboration with Medicines for Malaria Venture is at an advanced stage.

On Leishmaniasis our efforts are led by Dr Shymal Roy at IICB. We hope to move into development phase of one of his compounds for Leishmania Donavani. Collaboration with DnDI is in place to take this program ahead.

OSDD’s community engagement efforts are supported by Dr Andrew Lynn, Dr U C A Jaleel and Vigyan Prasar, particularly, T V Venkateswaran.

Sir Dorabji Tata Trust grant has enabled OSDD to initiate Tata CSIR OSDD Research Fellowship. This unique fellowship supports large number of researchers working from home. There is a woman scientist component in  this fellowship which supports women working from home. OSDD thanks the support of Tata Trusts and Prof Jayakumar Menon for believing in it. More details about this one of its kind initiative at http://tcof.osddbengaluru.net/

The credit for bringing OSDD to where it is today goes to Prof S K Brahmachari, and to Dr T S Balganesh who moved out of a senior position in a multi national pharmaceutical company out of his sheer commitment to find new drugs for TB, and the core team. Above all, to the OSDD community!

No one would have imagined we would reach where we have reached. Working on OSDD has been a humbling experience. The commitment of the community members reminds of ones own inadequacies always made one strive to excel. At times at feel, OSDD could have gone much farther ahead but for my own limitations.

The strength of OSDD is its large research community, particularly the student community, for whom OSDD is an emotional enterprise. They are its driving force and I salute them.

I have always felt that Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem Ulysses has special meaning. Ulysses, who after winning his battles and epic voyage returned to his Kingdom, but decided to abdicate his thrown in favor of his son Telemachus and start a new journey. In the poem Ulysses he gives his farewell speech and exclaims:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

He urges: ‘To follow knowledge like a sinking star, 

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.…To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’.

OSDD is for those who seek to go beyond the ordinary!

It is time to pass the baton!

Adieu folks!