Novel approach for minimizing investment risks and stretching limited budgets has 375 innovations targeting infectious diseases under development.
NEW YORK (28 January 2021)—The public-private initiatives that contributed to COVID-19 vaccine and drug development have showcased a model for accelerating biomedical innovation. However, public-private partnerships had emerged as powerhouses for fighting global health threats long before the pandemic hit. Over the last decade, such alliances have produced a wide assortment of life-saving technologies targeting diseases that afflict billions in low-income countries, according to a new report from a group of 12 product development partnerships (PDPs) that assesses their impact and future potential.
The report finds that, since 2010, these 12 PDPs have developed and brought to market 66 new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for a number of diseases—including tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, meningitis and sleeping sickness. These innovations have reached and benefitted more than 2.4 billion people in low-income countries. On limited budgets, PDPs build alliances between public, private, academic and philanthropic partners, enabling the sharing of financial risks and coordination of diverse expertise and experience.
“It’s an unfortunate, but obvious reality, that relying solely on market incentives to drive medical innovation results in neglect of the needs of large portions of the world,” said Willo Brock, Senior Vice President of External Affairs for TB Alliance, one of the PDPs behind the report. “PDPs have made tremendous advances in global health and our best is yet to come with so many new innovations in late stages of development, but we must stay focused on securing the support we need—from all of our partners—to ensure we build on the momentum of the last decade and realize the promise of our pipelines.”
The report notes the stark contrast between the neglected disease product development space before and after the ascent of PDPs around the turn of the century. For example, from 1975 to 2000, a mere 16 of some 1400 newly developed medicines targeted diseases that mainly affected least-developed countries.1 Since their inception, PDPs have marshalled industry, government and philanthropic investments and generated new political capital to pack a once-barren global health R&D pipeline. Currently, the cumulative pipeline of the PDPs behind the report contains more than 375 new innovations, 25 percent of them now in late-stage development. That is three times the size of the 2010 pipeline, which itself was many times larger than it was at the turn of the century.1
Examples of innovation delivered by PDPs since 2010 include:
Meanwhile, the current PDP pipeline includes a number of promising innovations. For example, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is developing broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV that are infusing new promise into the quest for an HIV vaccine. PDPs, including the Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI), have reinvigorated the TB vaccine pipeline, having contributed to the development of 13 of the 20 candidates currently under development, seven of which are in late-stage development. In 2000, there was no TB vaccine in any stage of development.
The European Vaccine Institute (EVI) is supporting the development of a vaccine against a chronic form of leishmaniasis that causes debilitating and disfiguring lesions on the face, limbs and trunk for some 100 million people annually in poor communities across 100 countries. The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and DNDi are part of an effort to develop a self-administered test for hepatitis C.
The report finds that a key factor in the success of the PDPs is that they are developing products that are both affordable and easy to administer—like oral versus injectable products and heat-stable innovations versus those with significant refrigeration needs. It also reveals that PDPs are cost effective. For example, DNDi estimated their cost to develop and bring fexinidazole to market at between at US $70 to $225 million, compared to the $1.3 billion estimated by Tufts Center for Study of Drug Development as the average cost for for-profit pharmaceutical developers to develop a novel chemical entity.2
Tapping PDPs to Fight COVID-19
Meanwhile, the report documents how PDPs have helped build global capacity to conduct cutting-edge medical research, including working with 550 clinical trial sites in some 80 mostly low-income countries. It notes that this global infrastructure has been tapped to speed the development of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and that PDPs have contributed in many other ways to fighting the pandemic. For example:
The report cautions that in order to continue this impressive track record, the future success of PDPs will require a strong focus on late-stage research and efforts to ensure access to recently launched technologies, given the rapidly maturing pipeline of new products. For example, the report points out that there is a need to ensure funding for research, manufacturing and distribution as well as training health service providers. The report concludes that “with more products approaching and reaching the market than ever before, the need to invest in research and access is increasingly critical and urgent.”
1. Grace C. Product Development Partnerships (PDPs): Lessons from PDPs established to develop new health technologies for neglected diseases. DFID Human Development Resource Centre. June 2, 2010. https://www.heart-resources.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/276502_UK-Report-on-Wider-Applicability-of-Product-Development-Partnerships-_PDPs__Report1.pdf
2. DiMasi JA, Grabowski HG, Hansen RA. Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: new estimates of R&D costs. Journal of Health Economics, vol 47, 20–33, May 2016. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629616000291?via%3Dihub
Source: TB Alliance