Citizen-science Against Sleeping Sickness (CASS) is a voluntary project, with the aim of contributing to research into Sleeping Sickness and the trypanosome parasites that cause it. CASS has been inspired by the citizen science and open science projects in malaria research such as MalariaSpot and Open Source Malaria.

Sleeping Sickness is considered a Neglected Tropical Disease. It infects thousands of people in Africa every year and is fatal if left untreated. The parasite species which causes Sleeping Sickness, Trypanosoma brucei, is one of several closely-related trypanosome species which cause the wasting disease, nagana, in cattle, representing a significant economic burden on some of the poorest countries in the world. I want to use my knowledge of kinetoplastid parasites and my bioinformatics and web skills to help fight this terrible disease by volunteering my time and the processing power in my smartphone and laptop. And since I have not found any existing project where I could do that, I have decided to set up CASS. If you would like to help, particularly if you have a life science or software development background, please sign up for updates from this blog, check out the Open Science Framework project, and let me know your suggestions.

It is very important to me, and I'm sure to any volunteers, that our work must complement that of the professional scientists, not compete with them. It will therefore be crucial to identify data which we can usefully crunch; data so vast that the professional researchers do not have the time to perform all of the potentially useful analyses on it. As volunteers we will not be under pressure to do work that has to be novel, or to publish, which will allow us to take a slightly different approach from our academic friends. On the other hand, we will make sure all who contribute to the project are recognised. We will take an Open Science approach, making our plans and our data publicly available. This will help ensure we’re not duplicating work being done by others. I have therefore created an Open Science Framework CASS Project. I have uploaded a file of tsetse fly distribution data which I have converted to an accessible format. If you want to contribute some data you can upload it there, or add your thoughts to the wiki.

There is still some thinking and discussing to be done on the best approach. In the first instance, given my own background, I will be looking at bioinformatic/phylogenetic questions, with the aim of using open data and freely available tools to work on them. If we identify a project where non-specialist volunteers can help out by categorising or crunching data (as they do via Zooniverse or MalariaSpot bubbles) then perhaps we will try to build a game to make it happen. (That will be my excuse to work on my Python skills!)

CASS doesn't want your money, just your time and your ideas. Join CASS and become a Citizen Scientist fighting a deadly disease!

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