Oral Presentation First Malaria World Congress 2018

Malaria research and development funding and pipeline (#205)

Anna Doubell 1 , George Rugarabamu 1 , Lisette Oversteegen 1 , Vipul Chowdhary 1 , Ming Ong 1 , Juliette Borri 1 , Nick Chapman 1
  1. Policy Cures Research Limited, Sydney, NSW, Australia

The target set out in the Global Technical Strategy for malaria – reducing the global malaria burden by at least 90% by 2030 – requires innovation in new products and increased funding for research and development (R&D).1 Policy makers and stakeholders need to understand the malaria R&D funding landscape so that they can identify gaps and make well-informed funding decisions. In this study, we provide an analysis of ten years of global funding for malaria R&D, describe the size and stage of the R&D pipeline, and provide an estimate of the R&D funding gap. We used the G-FINDER funding data – sourced from an annual survey of neglected disease funders and product developers – to analyse how R&D investment has been allocated across malaria product types and trends over time. In addition, we compiled a comprehensive R&D pipeline of malaria product candidates, and using data from published studies, we estimated the funding gap for R&D. Our analysis has revealed that annual funding for malaria R&D peaked at over US$640m in 2009 but has since been essentially steady within the range of US$540m to US$600m per year, below the US$686m estimated annual funding required.1,2 Public funders provided around half of all funding for malaria R&D in each of the past ten years and despite the lack of commercial incentive for industry to develop malaria products, this sector plays a crucial role in malaria R&D; in 2015, investment from industry surpassed philanthropic funding for the first time in the last decade. Overall, there are more than 100 malaria product candidates in development but there remains a shortfall of funding to advance these candidates through to registration.

  1. World Health Organization (WHO). Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030. WHO. 2015 [cited 2018 Mar 15]. Available from: http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/atoz/9789241564991/en/
  2. World Health Organization (WHO). World malaria report 2017. WHO. 2017 [cited 2018 Mar 16]. Available from: http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report-2017/report/en/