Biotechnology offers powerful new tools in the fight against the world’s toughest neglected diseases. Not only can biotech improve upon conventional approaches, but new technologies can help overcome public health infrastructure constraints in resource-poor settings. Available products are already reaching patients in the developing world and the potential for new innovation is truly enormous. However, the challenge cannot be underestimated. Companies face a complex web of market, funding and information barriers that has impeded scientific progress and precluded industry involvement.
BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) has been formed to break through these barriers. Spun out of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, BVGH seeks to radically change the incentives for innovators to invest their own resources into global health product development.
Our approach is market-based and founded on the belief that economic mechanisms are a critical driver for broad industry involvement. Our strength lies in our deep understanding of how industry “works” and our determination to translate that knowledge into solutions that dramatically improve the lives of individuals in the poorest regions of the world.
A Novel Approach
Innovators are caught between passionate perceptions of inequities and market forces that focus their attention on providing the best returns for their shareholders. BVGH – which was formed in response to a demand from industry for new solutions – understands this bind. Because of the high market risk, industry and the public capital markets must have meaningful and credible market signals to pursue development of these products, and the financial incentives must be strong enough to compete with other product opportunities. Companies also need to see a clear pathway to get developing world products tested, licensed and distributed to patients who need them.
After extensive consultations with a wide range of biopharmaceutical companies over the last several years, we have found repeatedly that innovators are hampered by an insufficient understanding of developing world markets and, in the case of resource-constrained biotech companies, lack the internal capacity to generate this knowledge through diligent market research. The prevailing assumption, often in the absence of any underlying analysis, is that these markets are simply not viable. While this certainly may be true for some (or even many) neglected diseases, we believe there are products for which there is a market and that market opportunity needs to be defined and facilitated. Put simply, the business case has not been made, and companies currently have little incentive to expend any effort to make it. Our goal is to bridge that knowledge gap.
To direct these new bio-innovations toward the developing world, business opportunities on the scale necessary to attract innovators must be “uncovered” or built. Through better market information, new models for tapping into emerging markets, and more credible and predictable developing world markets, BVGH can improve the value proposition for companies to pursue developing world products.
