Why you need Open Drug Discovery Teams mobile App for rare and neglected diseases

1. Why you need this App
Sean Ekins1, Alex M. Clark2
1 Collaborations in Chemistry, 5616 Hilltop Needmore Road, Fuquay Varina, NC
27526, U.S.A.
2 Molecular Materials Informatics, 1900 St. Jacques #302, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada H3J 2S1.

2. Why you need this App
• What if you need to find out about the latest news on a
neglected or rare disease fast
• What if you are tired of the status quo and want to do rare
and neglected disease research differently
• What if you want to share your ideas with the world
• Where do you go?
• Look no further – you are about to find out the solution
• http://tinyurl.com/6l9qy4f

3. 1. Intro
• What is a rare disease?

4. • How do parents or patients find out about a
disease?

5. Commonalities
• Both neglected and rare disease research have
a problem
• Too many diseases without cures
• Too little money to go around
• Too little collaboration
• Too many people dying and suffering
• Long term cost to mankind is immense

6. • How could scientists collaborate on rare or
neglected diseases?

7. • Enter – Open Drug Discovery Teams – the first
free mobile app for rare and neglected disease
information

8. http://tinyurl.com/6l9qy4f

9. 2. Why not create an app?
• Can we connect researchers and patients?
• Can we create Open Drug Discovery Teams
• How do we bring information on diseases to
the people that need it
• Can we centralize the data that matters?
• Bring social media into rare diseases

14. 3. What influenced design?
• Simple user friendly design concept
• Flipping through topics, big buttons, easy to
see on phone and app
• Crowdsourcing – use feedback to vote on
topics
• Why is there no Flipboard for Science?

17. 9 Panels includes one
on ODDT information
Can use multiple
Twitter accounts
Here is my icon
Stats summary
About App

18. 4. Topics
• We picked topics we had an interest in
scientifically
• We picked topics suggested by parents of
children with rare diseases
• We picked topics we felt could benefit from
open sharing of data
• We picked topics that needed a new way of
thinking

19. Disease Topics
• Sanfilippo Syndrome
• Giant Axonal Neuropathy
• Tuberculosis
• Malaria
• Chagas Disease
• Leishmaniasis
• Huntingtons Disease
• HIV/AIDS
• H5N1 flu

20. Other Topics
• Drug Repurposing
– News on FDA approved drugs that can be used for
diseases other than those they were originally
intended for
– Faster way to cure diseases?
• Green Chemistry
– Make chemical synthesis better for the
environment
– Use safer chemicals to find cures for diseases

21. 5. How to use the app
• Use it to publish links to your blogs on the topic
• Publish your chemistry, Structure activity data that could
help others
• Use it to raise awareness of a new paper
• Parents / researchers can find out about the disease – what
is current, what has published
• Use it to collaborate openly – an open labnotebook
• You can curate the data – vote on what matters to you
• Share the important findings
• Use it for inspiration that crosses diseases and topics
• Get rare and neglected disease researchers to use green
chemistry.

22. 6. What can it do?
• Collects Twitter feeds on hashtags for topics
• Collects Google Alerts on topics
• Allows you to see tweets of molecules and
structure activity data
• If you contribute to a topic you are visible in
the app
• It can track your contributions to topics
• All of the above happens in one App

23. Look at a topic and see the content
Click here to
endorse or
disapprove
Click here to
follow hyperlink

24. Endorse or disapprove content

25. Look at endorsed content

26. See molecules in the app
Click on
image to
open it
Ranked
content

27. Interact with other Apps

28. Find Structure activity relationship
data that is published for diseases

29. Stats summary

30. 7. Future
• The App becomes a “notebook” for science
• Integrate other data sources
• PubMed, Google Scholar etc
• Add annotation around diseases
• Becomes a database of chemistry and biology
data around the diseases that is open
• Link to tools that enable drug discovery by
anyone

31. 8. Why we need funding

32. 9. Vision 4 future

33. 10. Acknowledgments
• Antony Williams, RSC