Collaborative Chemistry

Well it just seems like yesterday when I was sketching out the ideas for what became Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) and then Alex Clark made it all come to life in record time. After alpha testing (thank you all those who commented), the app was launched on iTunes in April. We now have a paper submitted to Molecular Informatics on it’s development in peer review (comments were positive- thank you reviewers and thank you Gerhard Ecker for suggesting we submit a paper). So what next?

After much thought and discussion, we think it is time to ensure some longevity (server hosting for at least  3 years) and expand it so that we have connections to other sources of content (e.g. Google Alerts on the disease topics, etc – Thank you Antony Williams for that suggestion). For this to happen we thought we would see if we could raise just a little bit of funding to cover our costs which so far we are eating. It is after all a free app, with no adverts (yet)..please show us some love. Of course we have even bigger plans for the future adding links to some nifty cheminformatics and other tools (so watch this space).

Well this whole idea of going after crowdfunding is totally new to us but its seems like everyone is doing it so why not – at least its not VC funding with strings attached. Having had a rejection from Kickstarter for no obvious reason (they probably think we are not ‘hipster’ enough or possibly the word “drug” gives them the wrong idea ) we are giving Indiegogo a go..excuse the pun.

Find out about our campaign by clicking the widget, comment on this blog or at indiegogo, blog about us, tweet, friend us, whatever – just tell a friend..and add the #ODDT.

We are pretty picky about not wanting money from any of the small rare disease foundations because frankly they need every penny they can get reasearch moving forwards so they can discover a cure for their diseases and we want to help raise awareness of what they are trying to do – (the last thing we want is to divert any of their donations). By all means though please, please spread the word about the App and of course use it and get your funded scientists to tweet about disease topics.

However if you are a bigger disease foundation or a billionaire with a little $ to spare, we would love your sponsorship of ODDT and patronage.

Drug companies – perhaps you want to sponsor the app, that would be terrific! we even have ideas to develop a version of the App just for you without the “Open” that could be used inside your firewalls,  because we know that may not be what some of you feel comfortable with. It would also have integrated all the cool cheminformatics apps and more, however this will not be free, but reasonable, nonetheless.

Publishers, perhaps you have content that is “open” on rare or neglected diseases that you want to highlight? Your sponsorship of ODDT could be used to bring this open content to a bigger readership, and target it to people that need to know the latest findings on their disease or research topic. This could also be used to repair some of the reputation of publishers – time to give something back and believe me rare and neglected diseases are very hot right now.

ODDT users, please continue to tweet, also remember to endorse tweets or auto endorse your tweets by simply adding #ODDT into your tweet. If you are new to ODDT you can download it from iTunes and you can look at the user guide and see slides about it.

ODDT was simply developed to raise awareness of rare and neglected diseases and research topics we think are important – But it does so much more and of course is chemically aware (you can share structures, SAR tables and data!). By supporting ODDT you can have your say in the direction it takes – e.g. we acknowledge you of course for whatever you provide….but at $100 YOU get to pick a disease or topic which we add to the App permanently.

Enough Pitching..please spread the word and watch for updates.