By Asher Mullard

In July, the global health financing mechanism UNITAID established an intellectual property–sharing scheme focused on scaling up access to new and lower-priced antiretroviral drugs in the developing world. The initiative—called the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP)—aims to streamline licensing processes, drive the combination of multiple HIV medicines into one pill and foster the development of drug formulations for children. In September, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) became the first contributor to the venture, licensing a suite of patents related to protease inhibitors that are used to treat HIV. The task of bringing drug firms and other key stakeholders into the fold now falls on Ellen ‘t Hoen, a lawyer who became MPP’s executive director last month after previously heading up Médecins Sans Frontières’ Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. Asher Mullard spoke to Hoen about the challenges of encouraging companies to share their intellectual property in a normally guarded sector.

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Image by ©IAS/Marcus Rose/Workers’ Photos

By Elie Dolgin

Humans are the products of millions of years of evolution through natural selection. Yet when it comes to the treatment of disease, physicians and biomedical researchers have long neglected our evolutionary pasts. Now, a number of research institutes are attempting to remedy that by launching new research centers dedicated to the burgeoning field of evolutionary medicine.

The newly minted Center for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich opened its doors in late October. Backed by a $10 million donation from the private Zurich-based Mäxi Foundation, the center will focus on analyzing ancient DNA and bones as well as dissecting microevolutionary changes in human morphology to better understand modern diseases. “It’s medical research, but it’s looking from an evolutionary perspective,” says the center’s director Frank Rühli, a physician who has studied ailments such as atherosclerosis in Egyptian mummies.

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By Stu Hutson

The first-line regime of tuberculosis drugs has remained virtually unchanged for a half century. But instead of improving on these medications, some researchers say it’s time to scour the lists of already-approved drugs for other indications or start from scratch to curb the more than 1.7 million deaths from tuberculosis (TB) each year.

In early November, for example, the New York–based TB Alliance announced the launch of a clinical trial to test a radically different drug cocktail. “We see this as a paradigm shift in methodology,” says Ann Ginsberg, the organization’s chief medical officer, “And it’s been one that industry as well as regulators at institutions like the [US Food and Drug Administration] have been very supportive of.”

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By Jessica Wapner

Last year, a research project led by David Goldstein of Duke University found that variations in the IL28B gene had profound effects on how people with hepatitis C respond to treatment. More specifically, those with certain mutations were twice as likely to respond to prolonged drug therapy (Nature 461, 399–401, 2009). The link’s impact on patient care and drug development served as a wake-up call for investigators to ramp up efforts to identify genetic variants associated with disease occurrence and treatment response.

Spurred by this homegrown insight, investigators at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina decided to form Discovery Genomics. The new center—a collaboration between the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and the university’s Center for Human Genome Variation (CHGV)—launched in October. Although projects within the university are its main focus, Discovery Genomics also operates as a fee-for-service business for pharmaceutical companies interested in finding genetic variations associated with drug efficacy and toxicity.

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By Elie Dolgin

Each year, vaccine companies gamble on the flu strain they expect to make the most people sick in the coming season and develop a new influenza vaccine to protect against it. The strategy involves a risky calculus, so researchers have turned to targeting nonmutating components of the virus with an eye to forging a universal flu vaccine capable of providing lasting protection from a single shot.

“The hope is that if we make and develop a vaccine based on these conserved [regions], then the vaccine would last

longer than just one year,” says Peter Palese, a virologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

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Image by istockphoto

By Elie Dolgin

Animal experimentation remains an essential component of drug safety testing. But that doesn’t mean that pharmaceutical companies have to rely on the same old animal models. According to a panel of European experts, diminutive strains of domestic hogs called minipigs could provide more suitable platforms for toxicity testing than monkeys, dogs, rats and other species routinely used to gauge drug safety.

“There are many features of the minipig that make it more amenable for being a toxicology model,” says Roy Forster, chief scientific officer of the French contract research organization CIT. “If you had to start the field of toxicology all over again and you didn’t have the history and the tradition that we do, then the minipig would certainly be an animal that we would readily turn to.”

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By Elie Dolgin

In Europe, long-standing public opposition toward animal testing has led to a broad push to develop alternative means for assessing the potential hazards of drugs. But similar efforts across the Atlantic have often lagged far behind. Now, with the formation of a new society dedicated to finding nonanimal testing methods, as well as new government programs, many experts perceive a sea change in US policy.

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