GHIT fund launches next phase, bringing entire investment to $123mn
The Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund recently announced a total of 1.6 billion yen (US$15.5 million) and 10 partnerships to support product development of new lifesaving drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases such as Chagas disease, schistosomiasis and leishmaniasis.
The declaration was made known as GHIT prepares to enter its second five-year investment cycle as they are committed to steadily invest in hopeful worldwide partnerships at each stage of product advancement.
Reports show that since it was launched in 2013, GHIT has invested approximately 13.2 billion yen (US$123 million) in 74 global product development partnerships that leverage Japanese science and capabilities in pharmaceutical research and development.
According to BT Slingsby, the CEO of GHIT, “We are immensely proud of the robust portfolio of potential lifesaving products we have created with our network of partners in Japan and around the world). Adding that “This highlights that our business model, as a catalyst and investor of product development, is working, but the true measure of success is getting effective, affordable, tools into the hands of every single person who needs them. Now is when the really important work starts, and we’re ready for it.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that there are an estimated 50,000 to 90,000 new cases of visceral leishmaniasis. Over 90 percent of all VL cases are found in seven countries in South Asia, Africa and Latin America: Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.
A budget of approximately 88 million yen (US$0.8 million) will be invested by GHIT for a new partnership that will bring together Japan’s Nagasaki University (NEKKEN), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) with the United Kingdom’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
GHIT’s new investment of approximately 88 million yen (US$0.8 million) includes a partnership between Japan’s Nagasaki University Institute of Tropical Medicine (NUITM), Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and Antigen Discovery, Inc (ADI)., both of the United States, to develop a vaccine candidate that is designed to block the malaria parasite from using the human body’s immune system to power its invasion of red blood cells.
Human malaria cases rose in 2016 to 200 million, and the Plasmodium falciparum form of the disease continues to kill more than 400,000 people every year. Most of those killed are children under 5 years old in sub-Saharan Africa. While anti-malaria drugs, bed nets, indoor spraying and other interventions have produced progress against malaria, a highly effective vaccine could be a game-changer for malaria eradication in the future.
GHIT will continue to invest in the development of a new medicine to combat tuberculosis. While the common form is treatable, infectious disease experts worry that a growing number of infections with multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis could lead to a major global health crisis.
The first of its kind in Japan, the GHIT Fund is an international public-private partnership between the Government of Japan, multiple pharmaceutical companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The GHIT Fund invests and manages a portfolio of development partnerships aimed at neglected diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases that afflict the world’s poorest people.
Kemi Ajumobi, With wired reports