An Example of a Lean Startup: The Past, Present and Future of the Open Drug Discovery Teams Mobile App

1. 1
An Example of a Lean Startup: The Past,
Present and Future
of the Open Drug Discovery Teams Mobile
App
© 2012-2013 Molecular Materials Informatics, Inc.
and Collaborations in Chemistry
April 2013
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.
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

2. Timeline
Feb 2012 – ODDT idea to prototype presented at Pistoia
Alliance meeting in London
April 2012 – App Launched and presented at Pistoia Alliance
meeting in Boston
July 2012- IndieGoGo Crowdfunding
Aug 2012- ODDT paper published
Oct 2012- Tweeted NCATS compound structures
March 2013 – RSC Sponsors App
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

3. In the Beginning…The
Past
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

4. When Given a New Challenge How
do You Respond?
• Mid January 2012 Pistoia Alliance Ask for
volunteers to present in a Dragon’s Den
Scenario Feb 8th
at the RSC
• Ideas that will transform Pharma R&D in 2014
• So my natural response was :
“If I am going to take part I want to create
something real”
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

5. Why it is time to transform R&D –
This is just one disease!
• Tuberculosis Kills 1.6-1.7m/yr (~1 every 8 seconds) equivalent to malaria
• 1/3rd of worlds population infected!!!!
• Extensively drug resistant increasing incidence
• No new drugs in over 40 yrs
• Drug-drug interactions and Cc-morbidity with HIV
• Recent years have seen increased investment from Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (BMGF) etc.
• But no impact on new clinical candidates except from pharma
• Pipeline is thin and weak
• No data sharing on the scale of malaria
• Open Source effort in India (OSDD) but no real international traction
• Disconnected efforts - CDD, Pharmas, Academia, NIH
• BMGF & NIH do not coordinate TB efforts, not mandating open data.
– Result data hoarding – still not learning from failure – thousands of compounds
screened and not accessible
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

6. Motivation
• Early 2012: Sean Ekins met Jill Wood at a rare disease
conference
• Mother of a child suffering from Sanfillipo Syndrome
- Incidence rate: 1 in 100,000≫
• She had to become a scientist, doctor, entrepreneur and
venture capitalist to accelerate a cure
• Finding information shouldn't be so hard...
Jonah's Just Begun
Phoenix Nest Biotech
phoenixnestbiotech.com
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

7. The Problem
• Rare diseases? Neglected markets?
• Resources are extremely tight
• Cannot afford not to share research
• Drug discovery research is very asymmetric
• Diseases with many wealthy sufferers get
most of the attention: great return on
investment
>7000 rare diseases
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

8. Inspiration
• There are many 1000s of diseases
and few with cures
• Science Online 2012 on open notebooks and
data overload
• Flipboard
• Could we create an app
for science like Flipboard?
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

9. 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
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

10. 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?
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

11. So I started sketching on my iPad..
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

12. How would we go about finding
these teams?
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

13. Can we create virtual teams of open
researchers – we need a central hub to
integrate open science data
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

14. Everything is on the cloud and the App
becomes the glue for the team and projects
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

15. How the App should look – note the
Flipboard inspiration
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

16. Sounding Boards are Very
Important
• Antony J. Williams VP, Strategic
development for ChemSpider at
the Royal Society of Chemistry.
• Alex M. Clark is the founder of
Molecular Materials Informatics,
Inc.
• Alex said he could build the App
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

17. Within about 10 days Alex Created
ODDT to present at the Pistoia meeting
Focused on Tuberculosis, Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Huntington’s Disease,
Sanfilippo Syndrome, and Green Chemistry as topics in version 1
We did not win the competition but had useful feedback – the need to
articulate the value proposition
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

18. The Value Proposition
• The project is intended to bring together open data in a single aggregated collection,
and then facilitate forming open research teams around this data
• Disseminate important information to a highly relevant target audience
• Network and discover other researchers with complementary interests, and
opportunities to collaborate
• Team members will be able to borrow and reuse a growing collection of existing
Open data.
• The community as a whole can debate, contest or endorse data based on its quality.
• The app could also be used as a type of “lab notebook” whereby individual
researchers share links (URLs) to content and the app aggregates these.
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

19. Getting to the Alpha Version
• Added more topics – Chagas Disease,
leishmaniasis
• Added voting
• Added Stats page
• Added datasheet viewing
• ….Find alpha testers
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

20. 2012 ODDT Layout
9 Panels includes
one on ODDT
information
Can use multiple
Twitter accounts
Here is my icon
Stats summary
About App
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

21. In the Beginning.. Summary
• App released on Appstore early April
2012
• Ran an IndieGoGo crowdfunding
experiment
• Presented at ACS, TriConf, Partnering
for Cures in 2012
• Several posters on slideshare and
figshare
• Published a paper on ODDT Ekins S,
Clark AM and Williams AJ, Open Drug
Discovery Teams: A Chemistry Mobile
App for Collaboration, Mol
Informatics, 31: 585-597, 2012.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar
ticles/PMC3503260/pdf/minf0031-
0585.pdf
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

22. Drug Discovery Today, 18: 265-271, 2013
Disrupting Drug Discovery
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

23. Using ODDT in a Mobile App
workflow
Chem-Bio Informatics Journal, 13: 1-18 2013
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

24. The Present

25. Rare and neglected disease and
chemistry Topics – Keeps growing
• Tuberculosis,
• Malaria,
• Chagas disease,
• Leishmaniasis,
• HIV/AIDS,
• Huntingtons disease,
• Sanfilippo syndrome,
• Global Genes,
• Green Chemistry,
• Drug repurposing,
• Giant Axonal Neuropathy,
• Hunter syndrome,
• Real time chemistry,
• Hereditary Neuropathy Foundation,
• H5N1,
• Rare Disease report,
• Fibromuscular Dysplasia,
• iCancer
• ACS Chemical Information
#tuberculosis
#malaria
#hivaids
#huntingtons
#sanfilipposyndrome
#rarediseases
#leishmaniasis
#chagas
#h5n1
#greenchemistry
#hhf4gan
#MPSII #huntersyndrome #hunterparents
#realtimechem
#HNF
#raredr
#fmdaware
#icancer
#ACSCINF
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

26. What can ODDT do?
• Collects Twitter feeds on hashtags for topics
• Collects RSS feeds 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
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

27. 2013 ODDT Layout
Can use multiple
Twitter accounts
user icon
Stats summary
About App
News feed
Topic panels
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

28. Tap on a panel and look at
Incoming contents
Incoming data is sorted
by time of creation
Click on image to
open it
Click here to endorse
or disapprove
Click here to follow
hyperlink
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

29. Browse through multiple pages of
tweets
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

30. Endorse, Disapprove and
Comment
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

31. Recent contents
Recent
factoids with a
vote count of +1
or better
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

32. Content
Click on image to
open it
Ranked
content
Content is
currently
anything with a
vote
count of +1 or
better, sorted by
most popular
first
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

33. Tap on a link or image
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

34. Be able to download content
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

35. Look at your own and topic
statistics
Own statistics Topic statistics
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

36. 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.
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

37. What is needed
• Break down paywalls to papers
– Neglected disease apps could increase visibility of
older content to parent advocates and
researchers
• Breaks down walls to data
– Only recent data in PubChem etc..rediscovery of
old drugs published previously for TB..(e.g. PNAS
Gold et al.)
• Find sponsors who promote openness
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

38. Busting
paywalls
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

39. Secure
sharing
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

40. Problems can be opportunities
• Rare diseases have small research communities
• Less investment than Cancer, CV etc
• Published data inaccessible to parents
• But..
• Apps existing for symptoms disease mgmt
• Tight knit communities
• Willing to collaborate
• Try different approaches
• Approaches generalizable, cheap, disruptive..
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

41. The Solution Schematic
• government
• pharma
• charity
funding • academics
• startups
• foundations
• literature
• blogs
• open science
publication
Twitter
• content
aggregation
• research
communities
Open Drug Discovery Teams
#hashtags
RSS Feeds
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

42. Molecules
• ODDT is chemistry aware...opens up a world of possibilities
• ... harvesting chemical data allows many possibilities
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

43. Chemistry
• ODDT understands links chemical data, and has special
viewing, manipulation and collaboration features for
molecules and reactions
• Other apps such as the Mobile Molecular
DataSheet allow direct tweeting of
chemical data with ODDT topic hash tags...
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

44. The Future

45. 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
• Could we add docking and QSAR models etc.
• Rewards / badges
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

46. Logical next steps
• ODDT customizable by 7000 diseases
• Imagine each rare disease community as app – with access to
private and public data (DDT)
• Make more data available as apps or publish in apps.
• Reuse data – mash up – find new ways to use- apps facilitate
• e.g. GSK just announced 200 TB cpds to be public - content could be
pushed out in ODDT
• NCATS 58 molecules from Pharmas- no structures – published in
ODDT
• Show examples of drug discovery by mobile device
• Show how hypothesis from one disease can apply elsewhere
• Demonstrate repurposing by app
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

47. Where to next
• ODDT is an experimental project
• Sponsorship:
• App is free, data is totally open
• Potentially valuable intellectual property
• Know of a rare or neglected disease with an online community?
We can add a new topic
• Know anyone who is interested in sponsoring projects to
increase awareness of rare or neglected diseases?
Contact us!
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

48. Future Developments
• The Open Drug Discovery Teams project is currently a
minimum viable product
• New developments are happening fast, e.g.
- More topics
- New data sources
- Advanced cheminformatics
• Your feedback is welcome. Download the app, try it
out, and get in touch!
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

49. Data to Appify?
• If you have Drug Discovery data or ideas that
could be turned into an app please let us
know
• Alex Clark has developed these other Apps
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

50. Availability
•Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) is available free
from the Apple iTunes AppStore
•http://itunes.apple.com/app/oddt/id517000016
•http://molmatinf.com/products.html
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

51. In the literature
• Ekins S, Clark AM and Williams AJ, Open Drug Discovery Teams: A
Chemistry Mobile App for Collaboration, Mol Informatics, 31: 585-597,
2012.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3503260/pdf/minf0031-
0585.pdf
• Clark AM, Williams AJ and Ekins S, Cheminformatics workflows using
mobile apps, Chem-Bio Informatics Journal, 13: 1-18 2013.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/cbij/13/0/13_1/_pdf
• Ekins S, Clark AM and Williams AJ, Incorporating Green Chemistry
Concepts into Mobile Applications and their potential uses, ACS Sustain
Chem Eng, 1. 8-13, 2013.http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/sc3000509
• Ekins S, Waller CL, Bradley MP, Clark AM and Williams AJ, Four disruptive
strategies for removing drug discovery bottlenecks, Drug Discovery Today,
18: 265-271, 2013.
http://goo.gl/XKa6w

52. 52
More Information
@aclarkxyz
@collabchem
© 2012 Molecular Materials Informatics, Inc.
and Collaborations in Chemistry
http://oddt.net
http://molmatinf.com/oddt.html
http://cheminf20.org
http://collabchem.com
http://goo.gl/XKa6w