A Review article [2] published today in PLoS Computational Biology [3] describes the process of semantically enhancing a research article to enrich content, providing a striking example of how open-access content can be re-used and how scientific articles might take much greater advantage of the online medium in future.

Partnership aims to eliminate blinding trachoma and scale up the fight against other neglected tropical diseases

  Guest blog by Ibrahim Jabr, President, International Trachoma Initiative

This week has seen a significant development in the fight against blinding trachoma. As president of the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) [8], I was pleased to announce on March 18 that we are joining forces with The Task Force for Child Survival and Development [9] (the Task Force) to significantly scale up efforts and leverage additional resources for eliminating trachoma, a neglected tropical disease (NTD) that is the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) [12] and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) [13] issued a call today for ramping up funding and governmental support for R&D to combat neglected diseases [14]. Related research appears in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases [15], among other journals, and we applaud such publications for bringing much-needed attention to these overlooked diseases, which primarily affect the world’s poor and neglected populations.

The Low-Hanging Fruit [18] site provides a portal by which the community can view hits from these screens and make decisions on which compounds represent the most suitable leads to take to the next step in the drug development pipeline. We have now carried out screens for T. brucei, L. donovani, Entamoeba histolytica, and Schistosoma mansoni using the Spectrum Collection.

Last week, co-authors Jürgen Richt and S. Mark Hall published a groundbreaking article [21] in PLoS Pathogens [22] related to mad cow disease.