September 18, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By putting up money for clinical trials, investing in biotechnology companies, and assembling networks of doctors and patients who want to participate in research, health charities are helping to drive the development of new treatments — and becoming important players in the pharmaceutical industry, writes Forbes (September 15).
“By becoming a one-stop source for expertise and research about their disease, these patient groups can use as little as a few million dollars in funding to shift the priorities of the drug industry,” writes the magazine.
Health groups will give drug companies $90-million this year, 13 times as much as in 2000, according to Thomson CenterWatch, a research firm that analyzes clinical trials.
The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation pioneered the approach to get companies interested in developing treatments for the disease, which affects only 70,000 people worldwide, too small a number to provide a financial incentive. Over the past two decades, the charity has put $188-million into research at drug companies. The group is currently involved in human trials of 33 drugs.
The charity provided crucial early support for research that led to an inhaled antibiotic called tobramycin that was approved in 1997 and is now a foundation of cystic-fibrosis treatment.
“We have a commercially available drug now because we took that early risk,” says Robert Beall, president of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Norbert Bischofberger, chief scientific officer at Gilead Sciences, a biotech company in Foster City, Calif., told Forbes that the impact of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has been “huge.” In 2006, Gilead bought a company backed by the charity, and Mr. Bischofberger says the charity’s stamp of approval gave the company more credibility with investors.
“If they have looked at it, and they have funded it, it must be something worthwhile,” he says.
Now, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, and other health groups are all working with drug companies to find new treatments.
Some health groups, however, have been accused of becoming too close to drug companies. Sen. Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has called on pharmaceutical companies to disclose more about their contributions to health charities.
The article is available online.
