Helen Coster of Forbes interviews Paul Herrling, head of corporate research at Novartis, and chair of the drugmaker’s Institute for Tropical Diseases:
“Pharmaceutical companies get a bad rap for focusing their R&D efforts on diseases and ailments that impact people in wealthy countries. American men can choose between two hair loss drugs, and four for erectile dysfunction. Yet throughout the developing world, millions of people die from so-called “neglected diseases”—like malaria, leishmaniasis, lymphatic filariasis and Chagas disease—that kill them in horrifying ways. Drug development is costly and unreliable. Only one in seven drugs make it to market, and drugs for neglected diseases can’t be sold at a price that would offset the cost of developing them—not to mention the six other drugs that fail.
The more I report on global public health, the more I see the need for creative approaches to drug development and distribution. I’ve reported on product development partnerships (PDPs)—such as DNDi and the Institute for OneWorld Health—which share the cost of drug development with pharmaceutical companies. And last week I spoke with Paul Herrling, the head of corporate research at Novartis, and chair of the drugmaker’s Institute for Tropical Diseases— a $200 million, ten year-old initiative that develops new drugs to treat dengue fever, tuberculosis and malaria. After discussing neglected diseases with NGOs and PDPs, I was curious to hear from the pharmaceutical sector.”
Read the entire blog post and snippets from the interview on Forbes.com.
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