Open Source Drug Discudy overy (OSDD) programme of government of India is a CSIR led team India consortium with global partnerships. It is focussed on discovering drugs for Tuberculosis and making them available to patients at an affordable cost through collaborative research involving scientists, medical professionals, researchers, students and others who can meaningfully contribute to drug discovery.

To understand the biology of TB infection in the country, particularly in the context of drug resistance, it is necessary to study the diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in the country. While some studies have already pointed to existence of such a diversity, in view the technological tools that are now available it is necessary to collect and analyse the variation across the country.

In addition, OSDD realises that access to research materials for researchers is essential for furthering drug discovery process. Ideally a researcher on TB anywhere in the country should be able to access strains, DNA, proteins and so on of Mtb for carrying out research. OSDD will provide such research materials free of cost to any researcher anywhere in the country, provided such researcher agrees to share the research results with the community.

All strains contributed will be tagged with the contributors name and it shall be a condition of access that due credits and acknowledgements should be provided in any publication that comes out of the study on the strains so accessed. The contributions will also be acknowledged on the OSDD website www.osdd.net.

It will be the first time that such an open access repository for clinical strains of Mtb will be created. Hope you will contribute to this national endeavour.

http://oar.osdd.net/register-with-oar