Medicines for Malaria Venture, MMV

• Forschungsstelle: DEZA
• Projektnummer: 7F-00667.03
• Projekttitel Englisch: Medicines for Malaria Venture, MMV

Schlüsselwörter (Deutsch)

MMV
Malaria
Medizin
Beziehungen
Ausland
Gesundheitswesen
Forschung

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

Malaria is a disease of poverty. The social and economic impact of malaria is unacceptably high. Sub-Saharan Africa bears the brunt of disease burden: a heavy mortality toll that can reach up to 3 million lives - especially among children under age five and pregnant women. Deaths are preventable in over 90% of cases with effective antimalarial drugs. Cheap drugs, such as chloroquine and sulfadoxin-pyrimethamin, are still widely used in Africa but are ineffective due to drug resistance.
The pharmaceutical industry has largely withdrawn from Research and Development (R&D) of antimalarials. The extremely high costs involved in discovering, developing and registering pharmaceutical products to current regulatory standards (800 million to 1.2 billion U$ per drug) requires that the returns on drug sales be very high to be commercially justified. Between 1975 and 1996, only three out of 1223 new registered drugs were antimalarials. This long standing lack of drug discovery and development activity has emerged as a critical global public health issue.
Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) is a not-for-profit organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, that works on a creative solution to the lack of commercially driven innovation to improve antimalarial chemotherapy options. MMV operates as a Public Private Partnership (PPP; see Annex 1). MMVs partners include its donors (both public and philanthropic), its researchers (academic and pharmaceutical) and the many public health policy staff (from the UN/WHO network of organisations) who support it.
The ultimate measurement of MMV's success from the public health perspective is the positive impact that will be apparent due to available antimalarial drugs. For MMV, the aim is one registered new drug every 5 years on average with the first new drug to be registered before 2010. "New drugs" also include projects like e.g. the development of a paediatric formulation (syrup) of an existing drug (pill). Please note that MMV is the first organisation ever to take care of the drug needs of children in developing countries exposed to the malaria threat.
As of June 2004, MMV had 21 projects in its portfolio. When MMV was founded it was assumed that MMV would require five years to generate a "mature" portfolio of projects. This goal has now been reached in only three years.

Projektziele (Englisch)

MMV's main objective is to bring public and private sector partners together to fund and provide managerial and logistical support for the discovery and development of new medicines to treat and prevent malaria.
The public health target product profile, which is guaranteed by the selection of projects in the portfolio, is:
"Efficacy against Plasmodium spp. including multi-drug resistant strains
"No antagonism against potential combination drugs
"Maximum 3-days treatment, orally administered (1-day is optimal)
"Safe and well tolerated (particularly in children and pregnant women)
"Low generation of resistance
"Inexpensive, easy to manufacture, transport and store
The aim of this profile is access to antimalarials for everybody, with a focus on the most vulnerable. Furthermore, the intellectual property rights (IPR) of every project in the portfolio (and therefore possible new drug) belong to MMV for malaria endemic countries whereas the IPR for industrialised countries belong to the private partner (e.g. pharma) involved. MMV's activities also include providing support for endemic country regulatory approval processes, engaging low-cost manufacturing partners and disseminating information about the drugs.

Abstract (Englisch)

Malaria kills between one and two million people annually. The majority of its victims are children under five and pregnant women. Each year 300 - 500 million new clinical cases are announced and half of humanity is at risk. Approximately 90% of malaria cases are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. These countries do not have the capacity to combat malaria alone.

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) is a nonprofit organization created to discover, develop and deliver new antimalarial drugs through effective public-private partnerships (PPP). PPPs are a way to ensure that progress can be made in addressing those healthcare issues which neither the public nor the private sector can solve on their own.
The MMV initiative arose from discussions between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the representative body of the pharmaceutical industry, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA). Early partners in these exploratory discussions were the Global Forum for Health Research , the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the Wellcome Trust.

Umsetzung und Anwendungen (Englisch)

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