PharmAware Blog

Drug companies in Europe do more to make drugs available and affordable to the world’s poor countries than their counterparts in the United States or Japan, concludes a new type of assessment of company policies.

The Access to Medicines Index (www.atmindex.org), a Dutch foundation established by Wim Leereveld, a former marketing consultant to the drug industry, tries to strip away the public relations rhetoric to quantify and compare meaningful corporate contributions.

Top ranked is GlaxoSmithKline, the UK based company that has been involved in researching a range of new treatments for diseases in the developing world. It also offers “tiered” pricing to sell drugs at large discounts to low income countries.

Merck, which operates extensive drug donation programmes and is involved in researching treatments and vaccines for HIV, among other diseases, was the only US company ranked among the top seven.

BMJ 2008;336:1396 (21 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a397, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/336/7658/1396

Two research organisations based in Paris, the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (Institute of Research for Development) and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, have announced that they will work together to develop new candidate drugs to treat visceral leishmaniasis, Chagas’s disease, and sleeping sickness.

The collaboration will focus on the development of two types of molecules: quinolines for visceral leishmaniasis and canthin-6-one alkaloids for Chagas’s disease. Researchers working at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement have established that these molecules have potential therapeutic activity.

BMJ 2008;336:1396-1397 (21 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a389, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/336/7658/1396-a

This week, the BMJ has a focus on the drug industry using key opinion leaders. You can read these articles at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7658/1402 and even has links to interview with an ex-drug rep. Well worth a glance!