Over and over again in the field of global health, we stress that innovation is needed to address the unmet medical needs of poor countries. And where do we find that innovation? In a 2010 publication in Nature Reviews: Drug Discovery, analysis of drugs approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration between 1998 and 2007 found that 33 percent of all drugs -- and 48 percent of scientifically novel drugs -- were of biotech or academic/biotech technology transfer origin. Clearly, innovation and the biotech industry are synonymous. So how do we turn the great power of biotech innovation to the neglected diseases of the developing world?

Enter the Partnering for Global Health Forum.

This year's Forum will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, on Monday, June 27. At the meeting, government leaders will meet with key decision makers from the biopharmaceutical and global health communities to discuss ways to speed the development of new medical tools -- drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics -- to address the most persistent challenges in global health.

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, will deliver a keynote address on how ground-breaking innovations in biotechnology can save lives in the world's poorest countries. Leading panelists from around the world will also offer insights on how life-saving products are transformed from ideas in the world's laboratories to new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for patients in developing countries. Speakers Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator of USAID, Dr. Regina Rabinovich, Director of the Infectious Diseases Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Dr. Hassan Mshinda, Director General of the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology will shed light on the global health field's unique rules and drug development opportunities.

To better understand how the growing economic power of emerging economies can be combined with global health interests, Dr. Maharaj K. Bhan, Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology in India, will be joined by Dr. Bongi Gumede of South Africa's Technology Innovation Agency, Minister Lino Barañao of Argentina's Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovative Production, G. Steven Burrill, CEO, Burrill & Co, and Julio Ramundo, Director at the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), to discuss strategies for making real progress on developing and introducing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics in emerging economies and developing markets.

Margaret Anderson, CEO of FasterCures, will explore lessons learned from both past and ongoing R&D incentive design efforts for rare diseases in the U.S. and discuss how this knowledge can help in designing future R&D incentives for global health.

"The opportunities to solve the greatest unmet medical needs of our times have never been greater," says Dr. Melinda Moree, CEO of BIO Ventures for Global Health. "We believe that the program and networking at the Partnering for Global Health Forum will lead to concrete, actionable ways to speed product development for neglected diseases."

Don't miss the opportunity to explore the possibilities and forge new relationships on June 27 -- register today!

This month's Partnering for Global Health Forum provides an opportunity for key players in the public and private sectors to connect and make real progress in creating market-based solutions that will serve the health needs of the world's poorest. Dr. Berkley and Dr. Feinberg, both members of the Partnering for Global Health Forum Steering Committee, shed light on what it takes for private and public sector organizations to create successful partnerships that drive new product development for neglected diseases.

 

As someone who has real knowledge of the world of novel vaccine development for neglected diseases, what are the critical conversations that the global health community must have with industry representatives in order to engage them in novel product development for people in the developing world?

MF: In the global health arena, there are very few challenges that can be dealt with successfully by any one organization acting alone. Rather, success almost always depends upon how well people can define models of collaboration that accomplish things that no one entity can do by itself. However, I believe that we are still in early days of the definition, structuring, and execution of the types of collaborative models that will be necessary to achieve real and sustainable success in addressing pressing unmet global health needs. To realize this opportunity, meetings such as the Partnering for Global Health Forum provide a great environment for different groups to get together to identify areas of common interest and identify pathways for the development of innovative and positive collaborations. In addition, the meeting allows those seeking to identify potential partners or collaborative strategies to learn how other people are making such connections successfully, so that they can define novel, relevant, and effective models for themselves.

SB: The whole logic for having non-profit product development partnerships is a recognition that industry is critical for product development, and in the situation where there aren't perfect market forces driving industry, you need to have public sector funds and resources to bridge the work going in public and private institutions. From my perspective, it is critical for these institutions to have contact with as broad a sway of companies as possible. Innovation today comes in many different ways and areas. For me, the solutions to many of the problems in creating products for many of the toughest diseases are going to come from companies that have been trying to solve a problem in a completely different area.

For IAVI, one of the big innovations that we did over the past few years came out of Theraclone Sciences, a biotech company in Seattle that was not working on HIV. To make those connections, you need to have resources and places where you can learn about technologies that exist in different companies, and where companies can learn about problems that their technologies can help solve.

How do product development partnerships and other non-profits identify and connect with companies such as Theraclone Sciences?

SB: We created the Innovation Fund, which is co-financed by IAVI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with the purpose finding companies that were working outside of the HIV vaccine space and bringing them in. To do that, we amassed a network of people who were out looking for these interesting problems -- prominent venture capitalists in the biotech sector. They see business plans and technologies come across their desks all the time, and they act as scouts for us. We also use meetings like the Partnering for Global Health Forum as a place to meet people and identify new technologies.

Tell us about a successful collaboration that Merck Vaccines has established with non-profit institutions working in global health.

MF: Merck collaborated with the Wellcome Trust to create the MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, a non-profit research and development entity that develops new, and optimizes existing, vaccines designed to specifically address the needs of people living in low-income countries. To us, this partnership is a tremendous example of where the interests of Merck and the Wellcome Trust were aligned, and each partner brought unique and complimentary capabilities to the table. This initiative grew out of what started with an informal conversation I had with Sir William Castell, the chairman of the Wellcome Trust, at the Pacific Health Summit in June 2007-- a meeting that, like the Partnering for Global Health Forum, seeks to bring people from different organizations and disciplines together to explore and advance areas of mutual interest and identify collaborative synergies. In my discussion with him, it soon became clear that Merck and the Wellcome Trust shared a commitment to finding innovative solutions to global health challenges, and an openness to defining a new model of collaboration that would enable us to accomplish more by working together. For me, the establishment of the Hilleman Labs represents a positive and informative example of how different organizations can identify areas of common interest and lay the foundation for substantive collaborations and concrete partnerships.

What do you think we in the global health field can do to make it easier for biotech companies -- many of which are pre-profit -- to participate in global health research and development?

SB: We have got to advertise the win-wins that occur. I used to show a slide in my presentations of a publicly traded biotech company's stock price shooting up when the announcement was made that they were going to work on a project with us in Africa. By combining forces, our biotech partners realized we could help them drive platform technologies forward while providing additional support, creating a win-win for both sides.

At BVGH, one way we are attempting to help biopharmaceutical companies overcome the financial barrier to global health research and development is by designing a milestone-based prize. Do you have any advice you could give us?

MF: When developing incentives, I think it is really important for policymakers and advocates to really understand the details of the product development process employed by biopharmaceutical companies, and to have a good understanding of the actual barriers and bottlenecks that they have to get through to be in a position to successfully advance a program targeting an unmet global health need. The better they understand these challenges, the better equipped they will be to structure the incentives to actually enable the development of needed innovations. Likewise, I believe that it is very important for industry representatives to clearly articulate the challenges they face in applying their R&D capacity to developing a product for a disease that largely or exclusively impacts low-income countries, and to be open to engaging in a constructive dialogue with other stakeholders about how, collectively, they can define solutions for overcoming these barriers.