Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), a new not-for-profit drug research organization, was formally launched in Geneva on July 3rd 2003. The organization is to harness cutting-edge science to develop medicines for diseases afflicting the world's poorest people. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is a founder member of the organization.
Prestigious health and research institutes from Brazil, France, India, Kenya and Malaysia along with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have all joined together to launch DNDi. The organization will work in close collaboration with the UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR) to achieve its goals.
The DNDi has felt that only 10% of the world's health research efforts go into diseases that account for 90% of the global disease burden.
The six founding partners of DNDi are the Indian Council of Medical Research, Institut Pasteur (France), the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Ministry of Health of Malaysia and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Brazil). WHO/TDR will participate in the meetings of the Scientific Advisory Committee of DNDi as an observer to provide expert scientific and technical advice as required.
DNDi plans to spend around US$250 million over 12 years to develop 6-7 drugs and several drugs in the pipeline to combat sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease - three killer diseases that threaten a combined 350 million people every year. To increase the chance of short and middle-term success, the organisation will develop drugs from existing compounds as well as fund and coordinate research to identify new chemical entities and develop them into
drugs.
Over the past months, DNDi has proactively identified a number of promising drug development projects. In addition, with TDR's help, DNDi also sent a call for letters of interest to the scientific community in February 2003.
DNDI will be the first not-for-profit organisation to exclusively focus on the world's most neglected diseases. Moving away from the traditional Public Private Partnership structure, it intends to take drug development out of the marketplace by encouraging the public sector to take more responsibility for health. This basic principle is reflected in the composition of its Founding
Partners, four of which are public sector institutions.
DNDi's success will depend not only on government and private donations but also on the contribution of pharmaceutical companies, for instance access to compound libraries, expertise, and R&D facilities.