The recently released fifth G-FINDER survey reports on 2011 global investment into research and development of new products for neglected diseases, and identifies trends and patterns across the five years of global G-FINDER data. In 2011, reported funding for neglected disease R&D was $3.05 billion. Both public and philanthropic funding have dropped away since the global financial crisis, but industry funding has increased dramatically over the survey period, predominantly due to increased investments from multinational pharmaceutical companies (MNCs).

Twenty-five years ago last month, something big started, a collaborative venture that changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. In October 1987, Roy Vagelos, then the chief executive of Merck, launched the largest pharmaco-philanthropic venture ever. He approached me, as the head of the Task Force for Child Survival in Atlanta, and offered the drug — now copyrighted as Mectizan — for free if the task force could devise a distribution system.
The original target of treating 6 million people in six years was achieved in four years. Only 15 years after the program started, 250 million treatments had been given. Last year, the Mectizan Donation Program provided 140 million treatments for onchocerciasis in Africa, Latin America and Yemen. A ­quarter-century after the program began, 1 billion treatments have been provided free by ­Merck.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announce today the identification of three chemical series targeting the treatment of deadly neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), through DNDi's screening of MMV's open access Malaria Box. The resulting DNDi screening data are among the first data generated on the Malaria Box to be released into the public domain, exemplifying the potential of openly sharing drug development data for neglected patients.

An independent study on biopharmaceutical innovation in middle-income countries was released today at the 26th IFPMA Assembly in Geneva. The report analyzed key national political and economic factors that foster biopharmaceutical innovation. The report highlighted the primary success factor as consistent long-term policy and legal frameworks. These should be coupled with effective coordination of national industrial and health policies, encouragement of collaborations between stakeholders, and adequate intellectual property protection. The report further suggests that some countries specialize in those stages of the innovation process in which they have a competitive advantage.

Today, the World Health Organization released the 2012 Global Tuberculosis Report, which provides the latest information and analysis about the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic and progress in TB care and control at global, regional and country levels. It is based primarily on data reported by WHO’s Member States in annual rounds of global TB data collection.