credit: Andy Berry, Orange Photography

Victoria G. Hale, Ph.D.,

Founder and Chair of the Board of Directors

Institute for OneWorld Health

2006 was an exciting and productive year for the Institute for OneWorld Health. Our hard work and efforts of the past six years were rewarded with the approval of Paromomycin IM Injection in India. We also forged new partnerships and received new grants to continue our research and work to develop safe, effective and affordable new medicines for people with infectious diseases in the developing world.

In August of 2006 our first drug, Paromomycin IM Injection, was approved by the Drug Controller General of India for the treatment of Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL), the second most deadly parasitic disease in the world following malaria. The approval of Paromomycin IM Injection came less than three months after the submission of the application for approval, which was prepared by OneWorld Health in collaboration with our partner Hyderabad-based drug manufacturer Gland Pharma Limited. The drug is expected to be a key tool for India’s National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), which aims to rid the country of VL by 2010, and disease control programs in other VL-endemic countries. Gland Pharma will make the medicine available at cost, or approximately $10 per treatment course, a significantly lower price than currently approved VL therapies.

Our malaria program began the year with a noteworthy technical achievement resulting from the unique three-way partnership between the Institute for OneWorld Health, UC Berkeley and Amyris Biotechnologies. A report in the April 13 issue of Nature describes how UC Berkeley Professor Jay Keasling worked with Amyris Biotechnologies to produce the antimalarial drug precursor, artemisinic acid, in engineered yeast. This achievement shows early promise that the biosynthetic manufacturing strategy can be achieved at the laboratory scale. Challenges remain as the yield of artemisinic acid will need to be improved substantially in order to be economically acceptable for large-scale manufacturing. We look forward to continued progress this year with Amyris and UC Berkeley toward our goal of introducing microbially derived artemisinin into Artemisinin Combination Therapies by 2010.

We also achieved a major milestone in 2006 with the award of a US$46 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop new treatments to complement traditional approaches for fighting diarrhea. Diarrheal diseases are a leading cause of death in children under the age of five worldwide, killing an estimated 2 million children each year. The focus of this funding will be to develop safe, effective and affordable new anti-secretory drugs that inhibit intestinal fluid loss, which leads to dehydration and rapid progression to death if untreated. These novel anti-secretory drugs will be deployed as an adjunct to oral rehydration therapy for the treatment of acute secretory diarrhea, which is responsible for nearly 40% of reported cases of diarrheal disease globally. During 2006, the iOWH Diarrheal Disease Program initiated several new collaborations which include BioFocus DPI who will apply their medicinal chemistry and early stage drug development expertise to identify new anti-secretory drugs and the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) to conduct pre-clinical studies.

As we reflect on the past year we can be proud our hard work and the milestones we have achieved. We have proven that with a clear vision of a better tomorrow, a strong dose of determination, and the hard work of many dedicated people, we can ease suffering and save lives around the world. We are looking forward to continuing these successes and striving for more in 2007 and beyond.

Sincerely,

Victoria G. Hale
Founder & Chair of the Board of Directors