A radically inexpensive, non-profit approach can transform drug R&D? Now, wait a minute…
The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) isn’t just out to develop new therapies to help the world’s poor. It believes it is on track to, in the words of executive director Bernard Pécoul, “demonstrate that a different model is possible for R&D.”
Working with a collaborative model, the non-profit has created a network of academics, government agencies and pharma companies which together have gained approval for 6 therapies and put another 26 in the clinic, according to a feature on the DNDi in Nature which bullishly endorses the alt-R&D initiative. The group did that with a budget of $290 million, which Nature pegs as one quarter the cost of a single development effort in pharma land. Suerie Moon, a global-health researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and DNDi board member told Nature:
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