Big Pharma Pitches in Against Malaria

We've seen plenty of examples of good corporate citizenship this week, and now this morning comes another. Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, long characterized by some activists as a kind of Grim Reaper-Scrooge, is opening up new possibilities in the global fight against malaria.

As the company's malaria vaccine nears approval, Glaxo's CEO told the Council of Foreign Relations today that the company will be allowing free access to its extensive library of malaria drug research, including 13,500 potential malaria treatments.

One of the more deceptively pretty-sounding names in the Latin catalogue of causes of death, every year, malaria kills more than 880,000 people, mostly children under the age five. It's the third-deadliest disease in the world, with linked fatalities overwhelmingly high in sub-Saharan Africa.

Which is why Glaxo’s research to date looks so exciting: a Dec. 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, found that the company’s vaccine reduced malaria cases by 54% in children ages 5 to 17 months.

Not only will the company open up its research files, but Glaxo reports that the “small 5 percent return” it expects to receive on the vaccine will be reinvested into research on medicines for diseases in poor countries. The company is also creating an "open lab" in Tres Cantos, Spain, where 60 outside researchers will be able to use Glaxo's equipment and collaborate in the fight against tropical disease.

In years past, Glaxo's high prices for anti-retroviral medicines earned it disregard from activists (and a litany of unflattering nicknames, including "Global Serial Killer"). But especially in a week of stark headlines coming out of Haiti, this is some very good news.

Still, though, the company’s latest steps hardly represent much of a corporate sacrifice.

For a company like Glaxo, there aren’t great financial incentives to research malaria drug treatments anyway. Out of annual revenue of $37 billion, the company’s overall revenue in the developing world is just $43 million. Even if the company were to invest 20% of such profits into local healthcare infrastructure -- as Glaxo announced it would do earlier this year -- that’s still, as The Lancet notes, still just 0.1% of the company’s overall profits.

Much has been written speculating about the end of the blockbuster era for Big Pharma, as the easy market in rich countries for drugs like Lipitor narrows. On how substantitve a shift Glaxo’s announcement represents in how it engages with the developing world, the jury’s still out, but at least for now, it provides further reason for hope.

Photo Credit: Gustavo (lu7frb)