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? Continue reading →