High school students join Breaking Good and participate in chemistry research to improve health

Drug discovery is a complex field of research, which involves a wide range of scientific disciplines, including chemistry, medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology. The process of identifying new medicines requires deep understanding of complex medical conditions, their biological pathways and targets in addition to chemical structures, molecules synthesis and screening for therapeutic efficacy.

If so, how can non-scientists, and even more so students, contribute to such a complex process and engage meaningfully with drug discovery research?

The Open Source Malaria (OSM) consortium was initiated in 2011 with the idea to apply open source principles to the search for new malaria medicine speeding up and reducing costs of drug identification. Using openness and transparency OSM has explored several series of compounds, progressing drug discovery research and lowering the barrier to participation. This enabled the inclusion of undergraduate students across the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia who participated in the consortium as part of their teaching laboratory. Rather than throwing away their samples at the end of semester, the students are sending brand new molecules to be screened for their activity against malaria. And some of these compounds have proven to be very good at killing the parasite.

This is what Breaking Good is all about! By removing the secrecy of research and moving towards open source drug discovery, participation becomes public domain, and everyone can have something to contribute.