Informatic program to help drug discovery in Africa

African researchers to receive CDD Vault resource for neglected disease drug discovery collaborations

BURLINGAME, CA, USA, March 20, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Most drug discovery programs use specialized, proprietary software to organize data for molecules’ potential to treat disease, but this is often out of reach for academic scientists. Now Collaborative Drug Discovery will let research teams in Africa apply to use their software for free.

Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. (CDD), a leading scientific informatics company that provides advanced data management and analysis solutions, is offering free subscriptions to CDD Vault for select academic teams of scientists in Africa who are developing new drugs to combat neglected tropical diseases. This initiative aims to foster scientific collaborations across the continent and empower African research teams working towards finding cures for diseases that have historically been neglected.

The free CDD Vault subscription provides access to essential and advanced tools such as chemicals and biological entities registration, inventory management, assay and study management, visualization, data analysis and reporting, as well as secure data sharing and collaboration.

The initiative is “much needed and timely,” says Dr. Kelly Chibale, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Director of the UCT Drug Discovery and Development Centre, “The CDD solution is specifically tailored to the needs of the drug discovery researchers and will allow proper organization of data to enhance the impact of the research, reduce duplication of efforts and provide African researchers with the platform to facilitate collaboration.”

To be eligible for the free CDD Vault subscription, applicants must be affiliated to an academic institution in Africa, submit a brief summary of their research project on neglected or tropical diseases, and demonstrate a focus on the discovery of novel drugs for tropical neglected diseases, which include malaria, dengue fever, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and others. The subscription will be valid for a year, renewable each year.

CDD has a long history of supporting scientific research and humanitarian drug discovery, and this will be the fifth free service offered by the company. The other four services that are open to the public are: a free data visualization tool, curated metadata for 3860 MPLCN Assays, open source computational tools published on Github, and data contributed by various research groups hosted on CDD Public.

"Having had the privilege of supporting drug discovery projects focused on neglected tropical diseases across the world for nearly two decades, we are thrilled to launch this grant program to provide support to academic teams of scientists in Africa who are committed to finding new drugs to combat these diseases. It is our hope that this program will help to level up scientists in Africa and provide them with valuable resources and access to cutting-edge technology, ultimately leading to ground-breaking discoveries that can improve global health,” said Dr. Barry Bunin, CEO of CDD.

To learn more about the grant program and to apply for a free subscription to CDD Vault, please visit the application page.

ABOUT COLLABORATIVE DRUG DISCOVERY, INC.
CDD’s (www.collaborativedrug.com) flagship product, “CDD Vault^®”, is used to manage chemical registration, structure-activity relationships (SAR), and securely scale collaborations. CDD Vault^® is a hosted database solution for secure management and sharing of biological and chemical data. It lets you intuitively organize chemical structures and biological study data, and collaborate with internal or external partners through an easy to use web interface. Available modules within CDD Vault include Activity & Registration, Visualization, Inventory, and ELN.

Mariana Vaschetto
Collaborative Drug Discovery
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