The Pharmaceutical Commons

Abstract

In the last decade, the organization of pharmaceutical research on neglected tropical diseases has undergone transformative change. In a context of perceived “market failure,” the development of new medicines is increasingly handled by public-private partnerships. This shift toward hybrid organizational models depends on a particular form of exchange: the sharing of proprietary assets in general and of intellectual property rights in particular. This article explores the paradoxical role of private property in this new configuration of global health research and development. Rather than a tool to block potential competitors, proprietary assets function as a lever to attract others into risky collaborative ventures; instead of demarcating public and private domains, the sharing of property rights is used to increase the porosity of that boundary. This reimagination of the value of property is connected to the peculiar timescape of global health drug development, a promissory orientation to the future that takes its clearest form in the centrality of “virtual” business models and the proliferation of strategies of deferral. Drawing on the anthropological literature on inalienable possessions, we reconsider property’s traditional exclusionary role and discuss the possibility that the new pharmaceutical “commons” proclaimed by contemporary global health partnerships might be the precursor of future enclosures.

Open Source Drug Discovery: Highly Potent Antimalarial Compounds Derived from the Tres Cantos Arylpyrroles

“…The current model of drug discovery, whether in academia 20 or industry, can generally be characterized by secrecy and an underlying profit motive. 21 In the area of tropical diseases there are significant philanthropic efforts being made by many companies in providing treatments 22 and engaging in drug development 23 but also in conducting not-for-profit research. 24,25 There have been calls for greater sharing of data in the NTD field, 26,27 including the development of patent pools 28 and new Product Development Partnerships.…”

Straight outta the tropics: pathological features of techno-scientific promises in neglected tropical disease research

“…TDR Targets, on the other hand, was explicitly aimed at addressing the lack of safe drugs against several high-priority diseases, and developed in conjunction with the global health shift that transformed neglected tropical disease research and advocacy at the beginning of the century. However, these new global health commitments to research and development, which now have the adherence of the pharmaceutical industry, are arguably far from reversing the distinct pathological features that pervade their structures of expectations, as firms capitalize resources without holding further responsibility for their historical lack of involvement in research and development in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (Lezaun and Montgomery 2015).…”

“…Despite the considerable growth in local and international support for research and developmentwhere the TDR has played a significant roleand its focus on pharmaceutical technologies, there are no new drugs or vaccines to cure or prevent Chagas disease. Such ongoing deficiency has classified Chagas among the most neglected of the neglected diseases (Lezaun and Montgomery 2015;Porrás et al 2015). The only available drugs (benznidazole and nifurtimox) were developed more than half a century ago by Roche and Bayer laboratories, and their effectiveness in treating adults during the chronic phase is yet to be fully determined.…”

“…However, industry engagement in neglected tropical diseases can transpose existing asymmetries that enable new forms of capitalizing resources and exclusions even under a rhetoric of openness. Lezaun and Montgomery (2015), for instance, have identified at least three displacements through which exclusions materialize in the context of public-private PDPs: that is, capitalization of public image, exploitation of new collaboration networks, and establishment of potential enclosures on emerging markets, as well as on yet unidentified or unregulated goods (15, 21). Pharma thus becomes more central in defining contemporary promises in the field of neglected tropical diseases while, at the same time, no longer being held responsible for the lack of medicines historically attributed to the sector.…”

“…Against this ongoing disillusionment, large-scale research initiatives have not only been promising solutions in the form of new healthcare technologies but have also yielded disappointing results over the last decades as drugs or vaccines failed to materialize and reach populations in need. To restore their hopes and shape positive expectations, global health agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have been making shared commitments to research and development against the "neglected diseases of the poor" (Molyneux 2012;Lezaun and Montgomery 2015). Backed by a reduced set of stakeholders vested with widely acknowledged expertise and institutional credibility, their commitments promote neglected tropical diseases not only as legitimate objects of technoscientific enquiry but also as moral concerns that stem from the suffering of one billion neglected individuals (Redfield 2012).…”