The over-funded DG Research, which has never come up with a useful drug, is acting stingy when faced with a system that has produced breakthroughs in so called neglected diseases common in the third world but which have not proved profitable for big pharma to pursue, in part because customers are poor and in part because, when companies do develop drugs to combat TB, malaria and leishmaniasis, their costs, introduction or storage mechanisms are completely inappropriate for the tropics. Only 13 drugs have been developed in the area of neglected disease since 1975, of which 12 are inappropriate for their customer base. Result: some of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world continue to kill people in poor countries. “Big pharma know nothing about the third world,” said one insider from Medecins sans Frontieres. .
But in recent years, something called PPPs, or private public partnerships, have started up which seem to work: they are an alliance between NGOs, who can identify local conditions and can furnish cheap clinical trials; governments and charitable foundations, who put up the money, and big pharma, who have drugs-making expertise. The projects, which number dozens, are set up on a not for profit basis with the multinationals standing to gain in terms of reputation and in future positioning in developing markets. They have a further advantage: the high innovation level, testing many molecules for neglected disease drugs gives the drugs makers a good source of knowledge about new compounds.
Development costs, at $10 - $20m per drug, are absurdly cheap compared to the latest vanity drug developed for the western market. Though profit sensitive, the money is taken care of by governments and charities.
Chief among these is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, MSF and the UK and US governments. The European commission? “They fund less than one percent of this, because they are wedded to their big multinational framework projects,” said one insider.” Perhaps they should have another look at these proposals.
