Funding for research on neglected diseases reaches record

Funding for research on diseases that primarily affect people living in poverty hit a record high in 2017, according to a January 23 report by Policy Cures Research, a health think-tank in Sydney, Australia.

At $ 3.6 billion, investments in "neglected" diseases are higher than any other year since 2007 (see "Neglected Plus?"). An increase from 2016 to 2017 included increased funding to address neglected diseases in general, as opposed to targeting individual diseases.

Anna Doubell, director of research at Policy Cures Research, said that the launch of several trials involving new drugs, diagnoses and Ebola vaccines in response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 could give donors the hope that investments in neglected diseases will be profitable. of. "The many advances made shortly after the Ebola outbreak may have created optimism about what is possible," says Doubell.

Nevertheless, the authors of the report, called the G-FINDER survey, claim that the total funding does not reach the desired $ 8 billion – an estimated annual goal sufficient to cover the development of products that can reduce deaths and disabilities caused by dozens of neglected people. diseases. This figure could be reached if high-income countries spent at least 0.01 per cent of their gross domestic product on research on the health needs of low-income countries. At present, only the United States and the United Kingdom are meeting the goal set by the World Health Organization Global Strategy and Action Plan on Public Health, Innovation and Health. intellectual property.

First victories

For more than a decade, WHO has urged governments, organizations and companies to invest in neglected diseases, knowing that these diseases affect about one billion people, mostly in tropical and subtropical countries. The report suggests that part of this plea has begun to bear fruit.

The most significant change in 2017 has been that donors have invested more in research on drugs, vaccines and other technologies that simultaneously combat a range of diseases, including diagnostic platforms that detect various viruses causing fever, and in the main operations of development organizations, such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases (DNDi) initiative in Geneva, Switzerland. Donors invested a total of $ 382 million in these activities, an increase of 51% over 2016, thanks largely to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington.

Funds for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis research also increased slightly, about 70% of the investments planned for 2017. The funds for diarrheal diseases, including cholera and giardia, increased by 6, 3%.

Obtain approvals

But funding for research on certain diseases has decreased, even though the overall funds have increased. Dengue resulted in a loss of $ 32 million, due in part to a decrease in funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the expiration of a grant from the Gates Foundation.

And investments in all three types of hepatitis C infection, disproportionately affecting people in low-income countries, fell by $ 13 million, down almost 50% from 2016. The authors of the report suggest that this is due to the changing nature of investments in the disease after the approval of powerful new drugs against hepatitis C. Doubell says the funds are now moving from drug development to research on ways to help people in low income communities access medicines.

Nearly two-thirds of total funding came from the public sector, which increased its support by $ 181 million compared to 2016, thanks to increases in the UK government, the European Commission, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. India and South Africa. At the same time, funds of multinational pharmaceutical companies decreased by 1.5% compared to 2016 and those of small and medium enterprises by 3.9%.

Increased investment in research on neglected diseases is starting to yield concrete results, according to the authors. In 2018, the European Medicines Agency approved the first oral treatment for fexinidazole at early and advanced stages of sleeping sickness and the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first new drug for river blindness since 20 years, moxidectin.