CSIR arm in pact with Royal Society of Chemistry for novel drug development

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the largest European organisation for advancing chemical sciences, for its Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) initiative.

The MoU aims at raising awareness of the importance of Cheminformatics to accelerate the discovery of novel therapies for neglected diseases like TB and Malaria.

''The MoU, spanning three years, aims at finding novel, faster-acting, and more effective drug regimens for TB and malaria by advancing the discipline of Cheminformatics,'' CSIR said in a release.

The collaboration proposes conducting workshops and conferences to build links between experts and leaders in the coming years and focus on jointly building an online repository of real and virtual molecular structures along with developing free-to -use software tools for drug discovery and development.

The partnership also aims at exploring the possibility of advancing OSDD's e-learning programme for students.
 
''The Royal Society of Chemistry has undoubted strength in the field of chemistry. This strength will now be coupled with the strengths of the OSDD programme, deployed to improve the innovation for neglected diseases,'' union minister for science and technology and earth sciences S Jaipal Reddy said on the occasion.

Reddy also stressed the importance of scientific institutions to work towards finding solutions for problems that predominantly affect the poorer sections of the society, like the need for new drugs for tuberculosis, malaria and Kala-Azar (leishmaniasis).