Product Development Partnerships

There is no shortage of researchers who dream of developing vaccines against diseases prevalent in developing countries. So why are there so few such vaccines?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that even the most accomplished scientists typically lack the industrial know-how needed to take a good idea generated in a lab and put it through all the steps required to turn it into a viable product.

That experience is found in abundance at pharmaceutical companies. But as commercial enterprises, such firms are obliged to focus primarily on products that promise a significant monetary return on investment. They have little incentive to take on the risk involved in developing vaccines and drugs against diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, which - aside from posing especially difficult challenges for vaccine developers - exact their toll mainly in the world's poorest regions.

This explains why only 13 of the 1,123 drugs and vaccines developed between 1975 and 1997 were devised to treat tropical diseases.

IAVI, as one of the world's first public-private biomedical product development partnership (PDP), has been deliberately structured to address the gap in investment in health interventions for the developing world.

At its best, a PDP serves as a bridge between commercial, governmental and academic institutions to develop drugs and vaccines against neglected diseases by reducing the risk each sector faces in entering new R&D ventures. Examples of other health PDPs include the International Partnership for Microbicides, the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation and the Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

Most PDPs work primarily by funding and managing research and development carried out by partner institutions. But IAVI, like only a handful of other PDPs, is deeply and directly involved in product development as well. Our researchers, in partnership with commercial, academic and developing world institutions, participate in:

• Research aimed at designing and generating novel AIDS vaccine candidates
• Participating in the clinical assessment of candidate vaccines
• Planning in partnership with developing country governments, for the future introduction of AIDS vaccines
• Partnering with industry to ensure that the vaccines will be available at affordable prices

IAVI has the largest R&D program dedicated to the development of AIDS vaccines, apart from that of the US National Institutes of Health.