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Dear WIPO Re:Search Members and Friends,
November was a busy month for all of us at BVGH. We hosted the 2nd annual WIPO Re:Search Workshop in Washington, DC, which was attended by several familiar members as well as a few new faces. The event provoked a stimulating discussion about partnering best practices, which BVGH will utilize to create even more robust WIPO Re:Search collaborations.
Roopa and Katy attended the 2013 ASTMH Annual Meeting and I traveled to Durbin, South Africa to participate in a conference focused on IP in developing countries. Both events offered us opportunities to discuss collaborations and introduce attendees to WIPO Re:Search.
I am extremely pleased to welcome our two newest Members, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and the University of South Florida. Since WIPO Re:Search was established in October 2011, membership has expanded from 31 Members to 80. We will continue to engage institutions that have the capacity to perform neglected tropical disease, malaria, or tuberculosis R&D.
As 2013 draws to a close, all of us at BVGH and WIPO Re:Search wish you a very happy holiday season and new year!
As always, please forward this Snapshot to your colleagues and reach out to us with any partnering requests or ideas.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Dent
President, BVGH
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Jennifer Dent, Roopa Ramamoorthi, and Katy Graef attended the 2013 American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC last month. The meeting presented an opportunity to discuss research and collaboration opportunities with several members, including Ken Stuart, Founder and Professor, Seattle BioMed, Jose Maria (Pepe) Fiandor-Roman, Vice President and Head, Kinetoplastid Research, GlaxoSmithKline, Pradip Rathod, Director, NIH South Asia ICEMR, and Ted Nash, Chief, Gastrointestinal Parasites Section, NIH. Roopa and Katy presented a poster at the conference describing WIPO Re:Search collaborations formed in 2013.
 | | Jose Maria (Pepe) Fiandor-Roman (GSK) and Ken Stuart (Seattle BioMed) discuss collaboration opportunities |
After the ASTMH meeting, Jennifer traveled to Durbin, South Africa to attend the Creating and Leveraging Intellectual Property in Developing Countries conference. Jennifer participated in two panels, "Recent Global Patent Cases and their Implications" and "Research in Neglected Tropical Diseases and Leveraging the Value from Charitable IP Pools". WIPO Re:Search as a model to facilitate IP sharing was presented and discussed during both sessions by panelists, Dennis Liotta, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor, Department of Chemistry, Emory University, and Ellis Owusu-Dabo, Scientific Director, Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR).
 | | From left to right: Jennifer Dent, Tatiana Saribekian (Domain Russian Investments), Ponni Subbiah (PATH), Dennis Liotta (Emory University), and Stephen D. Sencer (Emory University) |
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This month we are pleased to announce that Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and the University of South Florida (USF) have joined WIPO Re:Search.
Situated adjacent to the University of Melbourne in Parkville, Australia, the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute is dedicated to identifying ways to prevent and treat childhood diseases. Research projects within the Institute's Infection & Immunity Group include tuberculosis in children, BCG immunization and the immune response, viral diarrhea, mucosal immunology, and vaccine and immunization research.
The University of South Florida is a high impact, global research university located in Tampa Bay, Florida.
Faculty members in its Department of Global Health specialize in vector biology and ecology, vector-borne and water-borne diseases, vaccinology, parasitology, and drug discovery and development, among many others.
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 Partnership Hub Central - Special Edition: 2013 WIPO Re:Search Workshop
Last month, BVGH held the 2nd annual WIPO Re:Search Workshop in Washington, DC. Individuals from member and non-member institutions participated in the half-day event. The Workshop featured a roundtable session to discuss partnering best practices, followed by breakout sessions focused on animal models and obtaining funding.
Jackie Fine, Director, Outlicensing and Global Health Strategic Partnerships, MSD*, and Sharon Reiche, Corporate Council, IP Policy, Legal Division, Pfizer, co-chaired the WIPO Re:Search Best Practices roundtable discussion. The session identified successful strategies and the potential challenges of engaging in collaborative research.
Challenges:
- Matching expectations between all collaborators, i.e. what work should be done, how long it should take, who is responsible for each part
- Time to finalize an agreement may be lengthy. Participants suggested that standardized language or clauses may be beneficial to accelerate WIPO Re:Search agreements
- Pharmaceutical companies' legal departments are not involved in the project discussions - this can lengthen the process of finalizing an agreement. Attendees suggested better internal communication or to more directly involve the legal departments in project discussions and planning
- Not knowing what company assets are available to researchers. The participants received a brief tutorial on the use of the WIPO Re:Search database. This database offers users a searchable database of Provider contributions
Successful strategies and benefits of WIPO Re:Search:
- Identify and maintain a common goal - participants noted that the best way to keep collaborations moving was to keep all parties focused on the common goal of the project
- Having the right contacts - maintaining contacts who can drive an asset request forward. Contacts at pharmaceutical companies leave, but WIPO Re:Search maintains a line of communication to the individual(s) at the company who is best able to move a request forward
- If a project stalls, BVGH can identify a new Member that is capable of moving the project forward
- A letter of support from a pharmaceutical company Provider Member can strengthen a grant application
Other key take-away messages:
- Pharmaceutical companies see WIPO Re:Search as a way to further their commitment to health by supporting a field that they may not have active R&D in
- Companies are interested in seeing what potential secondary indications a compound could have
- Partnerships are critical - no single group can do it all. Collaborations provide a faster way to obtain new data versus waiting for a paper to be published
 | | From left to right: Geoff Dow & Charlie Kiser (60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals), Njeri Wamae (Kenya Medical Research Institute), Conor Caffrey (University of California, San Francisco), Dennis Kyle (University of South Florida), Evan Secor (CDC), and Mark Rohrbaugh (NIH) |
Breakout session: Animal Models:
- Mice with the same genetic background can provide different answers to the same question. Providers and how the animals are housed can alter experimental outcomes
- DNDi provides guidelines for animal models of T. brucei and Leishmania infection
- Animal models that provide human correlates for PK/PD data are needed
- Animal models that require a humanized response are not perfect for in vivo experiments that require an immune response (e.g. for vaccine development)
- Good animal models for soil-transmitted helminths are needed
- A central resource that displays which institution has what animal model would be well received
Breakout session: Obtaining Funding:
- Researchers are not obtaining funding for numerous reasons including: not enough funding/grant opportunities to choose from, grant opportunities do not fit research project, reviewers do not select project
- The NIH is becoming more focused on product development
- Diversification of financial support - funders are interested in seeing another organization provide matching funds, i.e. two funders will provide ½ of the costs of a project
- In addition to the more highly publicized funding opportunities, participants noted that university alumni associations are a good source of funding
 | | From left to right: Roopa Ramamoorthi, David Olsen (MSD*), Fran Sverdrup & Jonathan Oliva (Center for World Health & Medicine), Michael Kron (Medical College of Wisconsin), Jackie Fine (MSD*), and Ted Nash (NIH) |
*Known as Merck in the US and Canada
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Highlighted Contributions
The University of Bamako is willing to enter into partnerships with organizations looking to make use of its five sites for clinical trials, which are certified by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Its facilities are certified for hematology and biochemistry, and specialize in malaria drugs and vaccines. The university also has experience with other parasitic diseases including schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, and leishmaniasis.
The University of Bamako can provide staff for volunteer recruitment, monitoring, clinical care for volunteers, and the possibility for interaction with the community.
For more information or to discuss potential collaborations regarding this technology, please contact Roopa Ramamoorthi.
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WIPO Re:Search Members in the News
END7, a campaign of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, launched a video campaign aimed to capture the heavy burdens of NTDs. The most recent video, Three Generations, One Hope for Health: A Story from Kenya, can be found here. WIPO Re:Search's recent publication in the Pharmaceutical Patent Analyst can now be found on PubMed. WIPO purchased ePrint publications of the article, which are still available here.
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Upcoming Global Health Events
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Dates
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Event Title
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Location
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Web Link
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Dec. 24-25
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International Conference on Tuberculosis Therapy
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Bangkok, Thailand
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Are you attending a global health event?
Do you have a Research Request to highlight in the Snapshot?
We want to hear from you! Please send feedback and suggestions via email.
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WIPO Re:Search Founding Supporters
*known as Merck in the US and Canada
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