In Africa, one child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. Tuberculosis claims nearly 2 million lives a year, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Globally, hundreds of millions of lives are threatened by parasites and other infectious agents.

Today, biopharmaceutical companies invent most of the new medicines for cancer, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes. But these are diseases for which there is a commercial return for the investment. Can biotech innovators play the same pivotal role for neglected diseases?

We believe they can.  We have investigated the Neglected Disease Pipeline and created a library of reports that encompass our extensive research on global health issues, the biopharmaceutical industry, and research and development (R&D) for new medicines.  We believe that by applying developed world technologies to neglected diseases, biotechnology can have a significant impact on poor countries.

In 2007, BIO Ventures for Global Health completed an extensive research project on Therapeutic Solutions, Closing the Global Health Innovation Gap. What we discovered was that many of the target drug classes biopharmaceutical companies are already pursuing for developed world diseases are also legitimate targets for neglected diseases. For example—proteases, which are the targets for several leading antiretroviral drugs, could also prove effective targets for malaria drug development. Kinases, which are being investigated for use in many cancer therapies, could be the molecular targets for novel malaria and tuberculosis drugs.