Off Patent, Open Source Model for Curing Tropical Disease

According to a January 16, 2005 article from Science Daily, Stephen Maurer, Arti Rai, and Andrej Sali have developed an open source model for curing tropical diseases called the "Tropical Disease Initiative."

"As with current software collaborations, we propose a website where volunteers
could search and annotate shared databases. Individual pages would host tasks
such as searching for new targets, finding chemicals to attack known targets,
and posting data from related chemistry and biology experiments. Volunteers
could use chat rooms and bulletin boards to announce discoveries and debate
future research directions. Over time, the most dedicated and proficient
volunteers would become leaders."

The key to TDI's success, they argue, is that any discovery would be off patent.