By: Alanna Shaikh
What we really all want for the NTDs is for the very term “neglected tropical diseases” to become a misnomer. And I don’t mean we want their territory to move north. We want research and funding and effective cures and treatments, for the currently neglected tropical diseases. We want to stop having to refer to them as neglected. We’ve now taken one more step down that road.
The WIPO Re:Search collaboration is growing, in a major way. Established just a week ago, on October 26, 2011, WIPO Re:Search[1] is a project of the World Intellectual Property Organization that provides a searchable, publically available database of compounds, resources, expertise, and knowledge. By sharing information, it aims to accelerate research and development into the neglected tropical diseases, tuberculosis[2], and malaria. Its members include pharmaceutical companies, universities and research facilities, and trade associations[3]. And who just joined WIPO Re:Search? Heavyweights – specifically GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Eisai, Co pharmaceutical companies.
GSK is one of the biggest drug companies in the world, and it’s done a lot of research into NTDs. It’s bringing some serious goods to the game. To quote their press release, GSK will provide “patents and patent applications to WIPO Re:Search covering small molecules and formulations directed at developing treatments and delivery technologies for NTDs as well as its full anti-malarial dataset which includes 13,500 compounds which in screening have shown evidence of activity against malaria.” That seems like the kind of thing that helps research move forward, doesn’t it?
Eisai’s no slouch either. It’s a Japanese pharmaceutical company and it manufactures, among other things, Aricept, one of the only drugs that actually helps with Alzheimer’s disease. As a member of WIPO Re:Search, Eisai shared information about seven candidate compounds, including one that may work as a leishmaniasis treatment.
Now we cross our fingers and wait, for new members of WIPO Re:Search and for all this information sharing to bear fruit. In the meantime, WIPO Re:Search is dead serious when they say its information is publicly available. If you’d like to try brewing up a NTD treatment in your garage or high school bio lab, go right ahead. The database is web-based and can be searched without registration. Go ahead, give it a whirl.[4]
[1] I can only assume they are being all cool and high tech with the insane capitalization and punctuation choices. We’ll forgive them their small flaws. It’s not like you and I are researching new cures for Dengue.
[2] Tuberculosis seems to be included into every new health initiative right now. I’m not complaining. XDR TB is scary, scary stuff.
[3] The diversity of members is a nice indication of the way that just about everyone is recognizing the importance of global health in general and NTDs in particular.
[4] How awesome is that? You can just click around and see what they’ve got. This is the kind of genius that the internet was meant for.
Alanna Shaikh is an expert in health consulting, writing about global health for UN Dispatch and about international relief and development at Blood & Milk. She also serves as a frequently contributing blogger to ‘End the Neglect.’ The views and opinions expressed by guest bloggers are not necessarily the views and opinions of the Global Network. All opinions expressed here are Alanna’s own and not those of any employer or the US government.