I would like to add my 2 cents on the last submission in the mailing-list by Dr. Stephen Maurer on the meeting we held at  Duke. I really recommend the lecture of his text since it nicely summarizes what we talked on the meeting celebrated last May.

As you can read in the manuscript, the TDI initiative will start getting some concrete form when Dr. Kepler and his colleagues at Duke university finish the first alpha version of the target analysis system. We really hope that will give to all of us a tool to start contributing to this initiative. In my opinion, the main idea behind the new server is to allow people to annotate genes from pathogens (starting with Malaria) with the goal of generating a list of possible drug target candidates. Hopefully the server will be running before the TropMed meeting so we can get some exposure by then.

I would also like to comment on the IP (Intellectual Property) discussion at the meeting. As a researcher in biology, I know that our IP are our "ideas" about what could make a difference in our research fields. To ask people to actually contribute to TDI in some form (including some "ideas") could be difficult. Therefore, there may be the need to find solutions to that particular problem. One of the solutions would  be to team up with a publisher to create or use an existing  journal where to publish research done with the help of the TDI effort. That would help to give credit to the people that deserves it. Additionally, the TDI server should keep record of all entries so that it is clear who and when input information into the system. This is, in my opinion, one of the topics that needs to be clarified if we want to have a successful TDI initiative. 

Finally, I would like to encourage all of us in the mailing list to continue discussing the points outlined in Stephen's document. We could certainly used the mailing list to add to what few of us could discuss in the last meeting at Duke.

All the best,

Marc