Sweet incentives

Incentives to develop treatments for "neglected diseases including malaria, tuberculosis and leishmanaisis" may encourage drug companies to focus more on potentially life-saving research and development, declares a U.S. business professor. The suggested incentive comes in the form of a "priority review voucher", which "would give a company accelerated regulatory review of one of its other drugs as a reward for developing a treatment for neglected disease".

Although these diseases affect more than 1 billion people, they occur most frequently in developing nations, providing little financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to create and test new treatments.

Writing in the Sept. 11 issue of The Lancet, professor David Ridley of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and Alfonso Calles-Sánchez, a patent expert with the Spanish Patent Office and former pharmaceutical policy maker at the European Commission, propose a European Union version of the priority review voucher system instituted in the United States in 2007.

Bill Gates explained an example of such incentives at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos. "If you develop a new drug for malaria, your profitable cholesterol-lowering drug could go on the market a year earlier...This priority review could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars [to the company]," Gates said.


In the U.S., the vouchers and other incentives are working. Firms and drug companies are motivated to begin clinical testing; although, these drugs may take several years to reach patients in need. Still, any forward movement in these fields is improvement. With continued encouragement, drug companies may enact the demise of malaria and other currently neglected diseases.

Do you have ideas or suggestions for other incentives that may encourage the eradication of malaria?


Sources:
David B Ridley, Alfonso Calles Sánchez. Introduction of European priority review vouchers to encourage development of new medicines for neglected diseases. The Lancet, 2010; 376 (9744): 922-927 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60669-1

Duke University (2010, September 9). European Union could create incentive for new drug treatments, experts propose. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 19, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/09/100909193359.htm

Image by Petar Marjanovic

Safer anti-malarials

In the arms race against malaria, humans wield the biggest weapons, but their cost is great. In recent years, malaria has mutated and adapted to resist the drugs used to combat it. Caused by a parasite and transmitted by mosquitoes, malaria is an infectious disease that kills nearly one million people each year. Humans struggle to prevent malaria transmission and to treat those infected with the deadly disease.

Unfortunately, some of the malaria treatments are potentially deadly as well. "Amodiaquine was introduced as an antimalarial drug, but. . . withdrawn from the market when it became clear that the drug caused serious adverse effects in the form of liver damage and impaired immune system." The drug is still used in the most severe cases of drug-resistant malaria. It saves lives, but endangers them as well.

Endeavoring to create safer drugs, scientists at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, studied the byproducts of drugs, looking for toxins. "A pharmaceutical in the body is, in the optimal case, broken down into harmless products (metabolites) that leave the body, for example via the urine. Some pharmaceuticals, however, can be converted into toxic products, which may result in serious adverse effects." Proposed by Tove Johansson Mali'n, the scientists uncovered a process that can "simulate the metabolism of pharmaceuticals in the body". In this way they can identify and characterize several potentially toxic products that arise as the metabolites of drugs". With the aid of this methond, Mali'n "has now managed to identify. . . previously unknown metabolites that may have caused, or contributed to, the adverse effects of amodiaquine."

"We hope that the method can simplify the work of identifying potentially toxic metabolites at an early stage, and thus facilitate the development of safe drugs," says Tove Johansson Mali'n.

Tove Johansson Mali'n, Lars Weidolf, Neal Castagnoli, Ulrik Jurva. P450-catalyzed vs. electrochemical oxidation of haloperidol studied by ultra-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 2010; 24 (9): 1231 DOI: 10.1002/rcm.4505
University of Gothenburg (2010, May 9). New method for developing safer drugs. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 10, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/05/100509202645.htm

Pooling resources

South Africa aims to "speed development of drugs for neglected tropical diseases by freely sharing patented information owned by drug companies and academic institutions." The country "will use a new 'patent pool' to work on new drugs for tuberculosis and malaria, making it the first government to take advantage of the industry-led idea."

After GlaxoSmithKline set up a pool to share patents, in the effort to create an effective malaria vaccine, South Africa saw the possibility to use vast research from various channels to create medications that will change the world.

"The pool contains more than 2,300 patents that are available for use by industry, non-profit groups and academic researchers to develop new medicines for malaria, cholera and more than a dozen other diseases."

"This patent pool is an enormous boost for us to have a significant impact in South Africa," according to Mamphela Ramphele, chairwoman of the South African Technology Innovation Agency. "Her agency will coordinate and nurture drug development among local companies".

The patent pool is a tremendous wealth of information, providing not only "free use of patents, but also know-how and expertise".

"Frankly, expertise and know-how are often some of the more valuable aspects of drug development, and also things that companies don't usually share," says Melinda Moree, chief executive of BIO Ventures for Global Health. "This pool has both of these things (patents and expertise), which I think makes it fairly unusual."

"Moree said other large drug companies are interested in signing up to the pool, but would not name them. The pool contains patents for compounds that have a potential to be developed into drugs."

The pool opens "up the innovation process around drug development for neglected disease." Millions of people suffer every day. "Drug development has lacked. Tens of millions of people are too poor to pay for the drugs". "This is really a step on the part of industry to try a new model around one of the things that has sparked contentious debate around intellectual property," Moree said.'

In the past, some pharmaceutical companies received criticism for "fiercely backing patents that blocked cheaper competitors, even in the poorest countries, where brand-name medicines were unaffordable." GlaxoSmithKline and some other companies responded by "selling AIDS drugs in certain areas without a profit and offering licenses to generic makers." Companies and countries are now joining together with the common goal of disease eradication at all costs.


Source:
Steenhuysen, Julie. "S. Africa taps patent pool for neglected diseases." Reuters. 5 May 2010.