Actors in the microbicides field

Microbicide research has been pursued to date primarily by academic and governmental entities, with growing participation by a handful of relatively small biotech companies. The lack of a strong profit motive has kept major pharmaceutical companies, normally the engines of new drug research and development, from participating or investing their own research capacity significantly in microbicides. A few, however, have made non-exclusive, royalty-free licenses available to the larger not-for-profit research networks, enabling them to pursue the development and testing of compounds initially developed by pharmaceutical companies.

The International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM), for example, negotiated such an agreement with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals regarding maraviroc, an ARV that Pfizer is already marketing for treatment of HIV infection. Under this license, IPM is pursuing “a full range of drug development activities, from preclinical formulation and testing through manufacture of clinical trial material and clinical trials through Phase III”,¹ in the hope that maraviroc will prove to be a safe and effective microbicide. If this occurs, the agreement further gives IPM the right to control of the manufacture and distribution of the resulting microbicide in resource-poor countries at low or no cost, while Pfizer retains the right to do so in developed countries where profitability can reasonably be expected.

The following is an incomplete, but illustrative, sampling of actors involved and their functions. Omissions have been made for the sake of brevity and carry no implication about the entities omitted.