The Pew Charitable Trusts unveiled the Shared Platform for Antibiotic Research and Knowledge, or SPARK, a cloud-based, interactive laboratory tool.
Pew's tool aims to foster real-time collaboration among scientists from different sectors as well as jumpstart drug discovery in the antibiotics arena by making information sharing easier.
SPARK allows scientists to share molecular-level data and insights and gain access to past research that can help them discover and develop new antibiotics. The tool leverages technology by Collaborative Drug Discovery to gather chemical and biological data from published studies as well as previously unpublished data.