Crowdsourcing drug discovery for pandemics

John D. Chodera, Alpha A. Lee, Nir London, and Frank von Delft.
Nature Chemistry 12:581, 2020
[DOI] [PDF] [COVID Moonshot] [GoFundMe]

The COVID-19 pandemic has left the world scrambling to find effective therapies to stem the tidal wave of death and put an end to the worldwide disruption caused by SARS-CoV-2. In this Correspondence, we argue for the need for a new open, collaborative drug discovery model (exemplified by our COVID Moonshot collaboration) that breaks free of the limitations of industry-led competitive drug discovery efforts that necessarily restrict information flow and hinder rapid progress by prioritizing profits and patent protection over human lives.