New and improved vaccines and drugs are urgently needed to reduce the burden of suffering and loss from diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in developing countries. But creating these new health products requires extremely difficult long-term scientific efforts, and the markets for these kinds of life-saving vaccines and drugs are both uncertain and may not be very lucrative. Because of these barriers and risks, many scientific organizations and biopharmaceutical companies shy away from investing in these areas.

What can be done to overcome these barriers and reduce risks using innovative approaches to financing global health R&D? To explore this question, a consortium consisting of the three leading non-profit vaccine “product development partnership” (PDP) organizations – the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the Aeras TB Vaccine Foundation, and the Malaria Vaccine Initiative – asked R4D to assist them in identifying possible solutions. Working with two other independent consultants, R4D created a menu of options, and was then asked to elaborate one of them: a scheme in which government guarantees would be used to secure long-term commercial market debt for the vaccine PDPs, with revenues from future vaccine sales helping to offset the costs of borrowing.

The proposal for a vaccine “PDP Financing Facility” is now being discussed with potential government and foundation sponsors, as part of the larger debate on innovative financing for global health. R4D is committed to developing frameworks for assessing the full range of new and innovative ideas to accelerate R&D, and to examine promising policy proposals.