Biomed Vaccines Being Developed To Prevent Infectious Diseases
According to Scott Whitaker, BIO Sr VP, the biotech firms "are doing big science, developing therapies and vaccines at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per product. Along the way, they -- and their investors -- are taking huge risks. Only 8% of drugs that enter clinical testing are ultimately approved."
He reports that for the world's poorest, infectious diseases exact a devastating toll:
-- Malaria kills a child every 20-30 seconds.
-- HIV/AIDS afflicts 25 mln people in Sub-Saharan Africa - including 7.5% of adults 15-49 years old.
-- Tuberculosis infections, many of them drug resistant, are climbing rapidly after decades of decline. Already in Russia, the iron lung has returned.
-- Impoverished nations continue to be racked by diarrheal diseases, pneumonia, and tropical ailments like leishmaniasis, dengue fever, sleeping sickness, elephantiasis and schistosomiasis.
-- During the past several years, Third-world conditions have given rise to outbreaks of such ancient diseases as leprosy, polio and even the bubonic plague.
The top 5 diseases alone -- lower respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases, malaria and tuberculosis -- kill over 10 mln lives annually and disable tens of millions more.
Whitaker explains that, "Fortunately, vaccines are relatively cheap, given the benefit they provide. The US contributed $32 mln to the 1970s effort to erase the scourge of smallpox from the earth. According to work cited by the Institute of Medicine in the late 1990s, that investment has yielded a return of $32 mln every 26 days. Every dollar spent on measles, mumps and rubella vaccines was found to save $21, while a dollar spent on diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine saved $29."
Today, the "entire global market for vaccines -- the products with the most potential impact on poor countries -- is about $6 bln, about 1.5% the amount spent on pharmaceuticals. And the total developing-world market for vaccines is only $500 mln a year," he says.