Merck to develop vaccines for poor countries

Merck and the Wellcome Trust said they would invest equally in the joint venture, making a combined cash contribution of 90 million pounds.

US pharmaceutical giant Merck and British research charity Wellcome Trust on Thursday announced a joint venture to develop "affordable" vaccines for poor countries.

Merck & Co. and Wellcome Trust said the non-profit joint venture, to be based in India, is "the first-of-its-kind research and development (R&D) joint venture with a not-for-profit mission to focus on developing affordable vaccines to prevent diseases that commonly affect low-income countries."

In addition to developing vaccines for unmet needs, the R&D partnership, MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, will seek to optimize existing vaccines, they said in a joint statement.

"The heart of this concept is the creation of a sustainable R&D organization that operates like a business, but with a not-for-profit operating model, to address the vaccine needs of low-income countries," they said.

Research charitiy and a pharmaceutical company for the first time

The kind of programs under consideration include developing vaccines that do not require refrigeration, and a vaccine against Group A streptococci which causes more than 500,000 deaths per year worldwide.

Merck and the Wellcome Trust said they would invest equally in the joint venture, making a combined cash contribution of 90 million pounds (roughly 130 million dollars) over the next seven years.

According to the partners, their joint venture marks the first time a research charity and a pharmaceutical company have teamed up to form a separate entity with equally shared funding and decision-making rights.

The site in India has not yet been identified, they said, but Hilleman Laboratories will support a staff of approximately 60 researchers and developers and is expected to be operational in 2010.