JAYA BANERJI

THE Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) was launched on 3 July 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland. This new research organization is comprised of a group of prestigious health and research institutes from Brazil, France, India, Kenya and Malaysia, as well as the medical aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières. DNDi will work in collaboration with the United Nations Development Pro-gramme, the World Bank and WHO's Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) to achieve its goals.

DNDi, a not-for-profit organization, aims to harness cutting edge science to research and develop drugs for patients suffering from neglected tropical diseases. These diseases, such as sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, affect the poorest parts of the world. In 12 years the organization aims to develop six or seven drugs for these killer infectious diseases that together threaten around 350 - 500 million people every year. In addition to this output DNDi also hopes to have several new medicines in the development pipeline.

To increase the chances of short- and middle-term success, the organization will develop drugs from existing compounds. It will also fund and coordinate research to identify new chemical entities and develop them into drugs. DNDi has proactively identified a number of promising drug development projects. With TDR's help, it is in the process of selecting promising candidates from the response to a call for letters of interest to the scientific community. Once the projects are selected DNDi will provide the support and the structure to implement them.

DNDi will be the first not-for-profit organization to focus exclusively 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 market-place by encouraging the public sector to take more responsibility for health. DNDi's success will depend not only on government and private donations but also on the contribution of pharmaceutical companies, for example, in the form of access to compound libraries, expertise, and research and development facilities.

Kiri, South Sudan. Weakened patients resting after a painful lumbar puncture to check for sleeping sickness parasites in the spinal fluid

Photo: MSF

Jaya Banerji, works for DNDi Communications and Advocacy. For further information contact her at: DNDi, 1 Place St Gervais, Geneva 1201, Switzerland. Tel: +41 22 906 9234, e-mail: jbanerji@dndi.org