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Don Joseph is Chief Operating Officer at BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), a GHTC member, and wrote this blog post in conjunction with the launch of WIPO Re:Search, a new consortium where public and private sector organizations share valuable intellectual property (IP) and expertise with the global health research community to promote development of new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics to treat neglected tropical diseases, malaria, and tuberculosis. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Tom Mboya Okeyo, ambassador from Kenya, recalled the old Chinese proverb in referring to the expensive, risk-filled, and time-consuming process of drug and vaccine development for neglected tropical diseases at last week’s Geneva launch for WIPO Re:Search, a new initiative administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, and BIO Ventures for Global Health. WIPO Re:Search is an unprecedented initiative to share knowledge, expertise, and intellectual property. Its mission is simple: to accelerate the development of new drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines for the World Health Organization’s list of neglected tropical diseases, tuberculosis, and malaria by bringing the firepower normally devoted to commercial product research and development to neglected tropical disease research. The vehicle for doing so is a central database, publicly available and searchable, which describes knowledge, expertise, data, and resources being offered by a wide-ranging list of contributors for royalty-free research. Contributors have committed that any end products resulting will be sold royalty-free to end users in the world’s least developed countries, as defined by the United Nations. From the initial conversations between neglected tropical disease researchers and the contributors of resources, new partnerships—and research projects—are expected to emerge. Don Joseph of BVGH speaks about the new WIPO Re:Search initiative at a press conference at the UN. This project aims to fight neglected tropical diseases, malaria and tuberculosis by fostering collaboration between public and private sector organizations to promote the development of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics. WIPO acts as secretariat of WIPO Re:Search, and BVGH will administer the Partnership Hub, a virtual meeting place where neglected tropical disease researchers can learn more about the knowledge, data, and resources being made available to them by means of a publicly available database (see www.wiporesearch.org). We at BVGH will answer questions, coordinate communications, and help researchers connect with their counterparts to help find the tools and resources they need to solve neglected tropical disease research problems. WIPO Re:Search was formed by eight of the world’s leading pharmaceutical or biotech companies (Alnylam, AstraZeneca, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi), in collaboration with government organizations (e.g., the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Indian Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Council of South Africa, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Brazil), non-governmental organizations, and other research institutions. WIPO Re:Search includes not only providers of knowledge assets, but neglected disease research institutions (the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Center for World Health and Medicine, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, and others). Ambassador Okeyo recalled the Chinese proverb in deference to his fellow panelist, Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization. Dr. Chan clearly demonstrated her enthusiasm for the project—and her challenge to produce results—to those participating. The road is a long one, filled with risk, requiring additional resources and significant time and hard work. But the journey toward neglected tropical disease product development just took a significant step forward.

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, Ashley Bennett, senior policy associate at the GHTC, provides an update on what’s currently happening with global health in Congress and an outlook for future legislative activity. The government continues to operate under the continuing resolution (CR) that cut 1.5% across the board to all government programs. At the same time, the Senate is starting the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 appropriations process, debating several “minibus” bills that combine two or more appropriations accounts. With these minibus bills, the Senate aims to complete work on appropriations as close as possible to the Nov. 18 CR expiration date. Here are some details on two minibus bills that would fund the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID): The Senate recently considered a minibus bill that would fund the FDA, in addition to several other programs. The Senate debated this minibus bill last week, but could not agree to the funding levels before the Senate went into recess. This week, when the Senate is back in session, it will likely approve this measure. Also this week, the Senate will likely consider another minibus that combines State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS) with several other programs, including Energy. The SFOPS account provides funding to USAID. This package could be debated as early as Tuesday, Nov. 1, and amendments will be allowed during debate. The GHTC has heard that if it looks like there won’t be enough votes to approve the package by the end of this week, the bill will be pulled from the floor and the Senate will try again at a later date. As mentioned in the last What’s Ahead on the Hill, the Senate SFOPs funding levels for FY 2012 are roughly $5 billion higher than the House funding levels, but still about $3 billion below FY 2011 levels overall. As the SFOPs account is combined with the often controversial Energy account, the amount of amendments could lead to a lengthy debate. After the State and Foreign Operations minibus is debated, additional funding packages will still be needed to complete work on the Senate side for all of the appropriations accounts. Meanwhile on the House side, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has suggested that he may consider adding accounts to the FDA minibus when it is approved by the Senate and moves to the House for negotiations. It is unclear at this point if this will actually be the case. You can find information on the FDA bill here.

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. GHTC member Bio Ventures for Global Health has released a new report that analyzes the engagement of different players in global health drug and vaccine development. The world invested $630.4 million in tuberculosis research and development in 2010—less than one-third of the projected $2 billion annual investment needed to eliminate the disease as a public health threat by 2050—according to a new report. While spending rose slightly by two percent since 2009, it is the smallest year-on-year increase documented. Funding from the National Institutes of Health supported more than 432,000 jobs and generated more than $62.1 billion in economic activity last year. FSG and GBCHealth look at how pharmaceutical and medical device companies can create shared value in global health by addressing unmet health needs in low- and middle-income countries.

Eleonora Jiménez–Levi is a senior researcher for the Treatment Action Group (TAG), a GHTC member, and wrote this blog post in conjunction with the release of a new report from TAG about funding for tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D). TAG has released a new report in collaboration with the Stop TB Partnership, which finds that in 2010 the world invested just $617 million in TB R&D—less than one-third of the estimated $2 billion annual investment needed to eliminate TB as a public health threat by the year 2050. The report, Tuberculosis Research and Development: 2011 Report on Tuberculosis Research Funding Trends, 2005-2010, tracks annual research spending across six TB R&D areas against funding targets set by the Global Plan to Stop TB 2011-2015. The report offers year-to-year data on the leading TB research funders and underscores the urgency of adequate and sustained funding. Dr. Lucica Ditiu, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership, emphasized this critical need for sufficient funding by saying “with current levels of funding it will be impossible to meet the research targets of the Global Plan to Stop TB 2011-2015. This is a completely unacceptable situation, because those targets are, I would dare to say, even modest. Where is the funding to push ahead research for a point-of-care diagnostic test accessible to all, new drugs for a shorter treatment time and a fully effective vaccine?” For the sixth consecutive year, R&D for TB treatment was the most well-funded research area—growing by 19% from $192 million to $227 million. However, this was just 31% of the $740 million annual Global Plan target for TB treatment research. The report also documents significant funding declines in basic science and vaccines research, which dropped 27% and 29%, to $126.6 million and $78 million, respectively. TB diagnostics accounted for 7% of global total spending with $44.6 million—a 15% increase from 2009. The infrastructure/unspecified category grew 46% to $83 million and operational research rose 17% to $58.1 million in 2010. Measuring these totals against the Global Plan targets, the only category to come close to its annual target was operational research and the farthest one was TB diagnostics. According to the World Health Organization, there were 8.8 million people newly diagnosed with TB and 1.45 million deaths in 2010, including 1.1 million new cases and .35 million deaths among people with HIV. Resources to develop new tools to prevent, detect, and treat TB have never been more urgent. “Recent progress in TB research is clearly threatened by stagnating funding,” said TAG’s executive director, Mark Harrington. “After several years of increasing investment, TB research is finally making headway with two new promising drugs for the treatment of multi-drug resistant TB and a new drug combination active against both drug sensitive and drug resistant TB. Cutting investments now will cost lives in the future.”