Help Identify New Antibiotics at Home with The ILIAD Project

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

So is anyone here at all related to the Iliad project on IndieGogo?

Seems like exactly the same project, but with money involved. Actually, it looks like they're not even isolating colonies, which is a lot simpler (and raises far fewer biosafety concerns). They seem to have just as little of a followup plan to actually characterize *novel* antibiotics after crowdsourcing the samples though...

Did these guys "steal" Pieter et al's idea and are trying to capitalize on it? Or is this just a case of "great minds think alike"? Either way, I think it's more important to get more people working on this, rather than quibble over who should get credit.

Of course, none of this is going to be worth a damn unless you can actually follow up and do the hard science of characterizing the antibiotics, filtering out the one-in-a-thousand that might actually be novel, and identifying its structure. There's a reason Big Pharma went out of the antibiotic hunting business, and it's *not* because they didn't have enough people sampling leaves and soil bacteria. I've yet to hear a solution to that side of the equation - DIYbio/crowdsourced or otherwise...

Patrik

[Denisa Kera]

Yes, it looks like they are either ignorant or plain evil, but I don't have time to talk to them and I will not back them, my position now is to ignore them, since our efforts are more global and with my students I plan to work on this for the whole next semester. I'm also meeting Pieter and Waag around Jan 24, then a Belin workshop with Rudi on 25 and 26, and we will see what is possible to do around Transmediale and with hacKIDemia...  The part, which we need to finalize is to simplify the protocol and take care of the biosafety issue (I think the best model here is to ask some people in microbiology to partner this), and the interesting part is the whole gamification of the soil results, after which the most interesting once will be sequenced (either in cooperation with BGI, open, Ninja PCR or some other partners) and we share all the data over Synbioa, which also supports the "gamified" part as a database...  At least this was the original plan, if we can finalize the protocol, that would be the first milestone.

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[Pieter van Boheemen]

Most likely they just came up with the same idea at the same time. Although they obviously missed the gamification part. Apart from education, the only reward they offer is "contribution to science", which does not sound that exciting to me.

In any case, I would like to keep in mind that antibiotics are not a thing on itself. The main reason for needing to find new ones, is because of misuse. Which links BioStrike to our intensive industrialized meat farming culture. These political and societal issues need as much attention as the technology or science. It is another piece of evidence that our current societal model is based on 19th century, linear, top down, fossil based, corrupt and learning-through-crises methodologies. Screening for new antibiotics is for me also about countering this living dinosaur system as well. This starts with awareness and a sense of ownership, which works very well through hands-on workshop and experience. So that's what I'd envision BioStrike to achieve. Rather than feeding the BioStrike results into the old already broken system, it's much more interesting to see to what extend we can create a new infrastructure based on more modern values as bottom up, circular, open, ever-learning and sense of responsibility. And let's not forget that most people on this planet live somewhere around or between India, China and Indonesia, so including them is vital considering their potential antibiotic use once their middle-class comes up to speed. Big pharma got out of antibiotics not just because of technological challenges, rather they are part of the old system and not fit for fixing the challenges of modern times.

[Brian Degger]

I'm interested in Biostrike,

not so interested in supporting a kickstarter for some gloves ;)

I would say it is zeigisty, this hunt for antibiotics, and there is room for a few different approaches. 

If the protocol is working/available, Makerfaire NCl(april 27-29) I would like to present/invite you all/workshop it (although I don't have budget), This year I got people kissing petridishes :) 

British Science Festival is next September.  

anyway....lets go bio prospecting :) 

cheers,

Brian