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14 September 2010

Rich-world diseases could hijack poor world's biotech

A new wave of biotech firms in developing countries has sprung up to meet an urgent global need: affordable drugs and vaccines for the poor. But there's a danger that market forces will push them to just make more drugs for the rich.
Rahim Rezaie and Peter Singer of the University of Toronto, Canada, studied 78 small, innovative biotech firms in four leading economies of the developing world: India, China, Brazil and South Africa. The companies have 69 affordable drugs and vaccines on the market, and another 54 in the pipeline, for local problems such as tuberculosis and tropical diseases.
These diseases have been neglected by pharmaceutical companies in Europe and North America because most of the people who get them cannot pay much for treatment, making their development economically unattractive.
Drugs and vaccines are expensive to test and bring to market, so the small companies are increasingly partnering with large pharmaceutical companies to do so. As a result, Singer and Rezaie warn, they may shift to making the products to treat the diseases of the rich world that big pharma prefers.
Rezaie cites a company in India working with a Danish firm on a treatment for diabetes, and another in China working with US firms on drugs for inflammatory bowel disease. Both are diseases that are major problems in the west.

--Health or wealth?
Shantha Biotechnics of Hyderabad, India, on the other hand, has made hepatitis B vaccination possible for millions of Indians by using bacteria equipped with viral genes to make the vaccine, slashing its cost by a factor of 60. Last year, however, it was bought by Sanofi-Aventis, based in Paris, France, and there are fears its focus might change.
"These companies don't need to choose between global health and global wealth," says Singer. "There are things that can be done now to make it easier for them to make a profit and meet local needs as well."
Current deals that offer government or philanthropic money to entice companies in rich countries to focus on poor people's diseases could be offered to companies in poor countries too, as could deals through which drug companies allow independent researchers to use their patents to develop drugs for neglected diseases, in return for a royalty payment. Information-sharing schemes could make it easier for companies in different developing countries to collaborate with each other.
"These [small biotech] companies are like a vein of gold that could be harnessed for global health," says Singer. "There's a brief window of opportunity now to make sure it's not tapped just to make necklaces for the rich."

--Journal reference: Nature Biotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nbt0910-907
When this article was first posted, the second sentence of the fifth paragraph read: "Both are diseases that are major problems only in the west." In addition, the penultimate paragraph has since been expanded.

**Published in "New Scientist Health"

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