ANALYSIS

We use the evidence collected through the G-FINDER project and our R&D pipeline tracker to produce a range of independent reports, which you can find below.

Doing Well by Doing Good: Why investing in global health R&D benefits the United States and the world

Together with the Global Health Technologies Coalition, we publish a report examining how US federal funding for global health R&D is delivering impact both at home and abroad.

The report details funding trends over the past 16 years for US government investment in three categories of global health R&D: neglected diseases; emerging infectious diseases, including COVID-19; and sexual and reproductive health issues. It quantifies the impact of this support in advancing new technologies to approval and a burgeoning pipeline of potential products for neglected and non-COVID emerging infectious diseases, with individual case studies on the impact of US-supported innovations. The report also examines the broader returns from these investments, including how they drive improved research capacity and economic development in low- and middle-income countries and directly benefit the US economy by creating jobs, stimulating industry investment, and contributing multiplied impact to the economy relative to their congressional appropriations.

G-FINDER – snapshots

Policy Cures Research examines targeted global health product innovations and R&D investment landscapes in our Snapshot series.

G-FINDER – neglected diseases

Data on global investment in neglected disease R&D is collected through the G-FINDER survey and analysed in our annual G-FINDER reports, which describe how R&D investment is allocated across diseases and product types, funding trends over time, and potential gaps in funding.

The 2023 Neglected Disease G-FINDER report, The Higher Cost of Lower Funding, covers R&D funding from the 2022 financial year. The report provides headline funding figures and trend analyses for global investment into research and development of new products to prevent, diagnose, control or cure neglected diseases in developing countries. Content includes:

All underlying data are available on our data portal for supplementary graphs and tables.

Previous Neglected Disease G-FINDER reports are here:

The 2016 G-FINDER report was developed in collaboration by Policy Cures Research and Policy Cures. It can also be downloaded on their website here.

The G-FINDER neglected disease series was created by Policy Cures. The first eight reports in the series – G-FINDER 2008-2015 – were published by Policy Cures and can be downloaded on their website here.

The new sexual and reproductive health G-FINDER report, Beyond Spillovers, provides a comprehensive look at the R&D landscape for SRH products and technologies that are applicable to low- and middle-income country settings. It shows the latest R&D funding trends for sexually transmitted infections, HPV and related cervical cancer, contraception, multipurpose prevention technologies, preeclampsia & eclampsia, and postpartum haemorrhage as well as multi-issue R&D.

The previous SRH G-FINDER report, covering investments in 2018, is available here.

The Accelerating Innovation for Mothers (AIM) project – spearheaded by the Concept Foundation and delivered in partnership with Policy Cures Research and Burnet Institute – was created with the aim of fostering greater investment in and development of critical maternal health medicines for seven significant pregnancy-related conditions, where biomedical product gaps exist:

  • Preterm labour/birth
  • Preeclampsia/eclampsia
  • Intrauterine growth restriction
  • Postpartum haemorrhage
  • Intrapartum foetal distress
  • Maternal enteric microbiome/environmental enteric dysfunction
  • Maternal iron deficiency anaemia

As part of this work, Policy Cures Research has created a comprehensive database profiling medicines, diagnostics, and devices – both approved and in the development pipeline – for these seven conditions. The database is accessible here.

Findings from the pipeline are detailed in the following reports:

We have also published several articles with insights provided by the database:

Policy Cures Research and Wellcome have partnered to create a comprehensive database of all snakebite envenoming medicines with direct action on snake venom toxins that have either been investigated or been available for clinical use since in 2015.

We found a total of 127 antivenom products marketed or available for use, along with 196 candidate medicines (drugs and biologics) actively investigated within the last seven years since previous major reviews. This platform provides a much-needed tool to evaluate and prioritise candidates and products under development or in use, with a view to accelerating progress in snakebite therapeutics R&D.

  • Explore the online database portal here
  • Download the full database in Excel or view available products for snakebite envenoming here and investigational candidates here
  • Read our accompanying report here

Our research validates that currently available snakebite products are many, but uniform: they are entirely animal plasma-derived antibody-based antivenoms; highly species specific and immunoreactive; and require only limited safety and effectiveness to enter the market.

Encouragingly, novel SBE therapeutics under investigation are many and diverse, and include an array of both biological and small molecule product types: new plasma-derived antivenoms; recombinant (some humanised) antibody products; whole proteins or peptides; DNA aptamers; synthetic small molecules; and botanical extract isolates and compounds. While most are in early stages of research, repurposed drugs account for over a third of all candidates, possibly indicating a faster pace of development to come.

Our 2019 report Global funding for snakebite envenoming research 2007-2018 explores the results of the first ever survey on global investment in snakebite research. More information is available below.

Our latest G-FINDER report is a comprehensive analysis of R&D investments to fight emerging infectious diseases in 2019 and 2020. For the first time, we provide an in-depth look at R&D funding for COVID-19, in addition to priority diseases such as Ebola, Zika and Disease X.

Resources include:

The previous report, covering investments from 2014 to 2018, is available here.

We contributed to the WHO’s 2021 World Malaria Report, an in-depth update on global and regional malaria data and trends. Using the latest G-FINDER data, we analysed funding flows, including by product type and by sector. Our work can be found page 64 onwards.

In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria: 2016-2030 (GTS), setting out a pathway to achieving the goal of reducing the global malaria burden by 90% by 2030, and estimating the investment that would be needed to make this happen. The R&D component of these cost estimates was based on work done by Policy Cures.

Our 2021 report provides a refreshed estimate of the R&D funding needs for the remaining years of the GTS period. It takes into account changes in the malaria R&D landscape in the years following the original modelling exercise, including new or evolving research priorities, improved assumptions and progression of the existing R&D pipeline.

Policy Cures Research publishes country-specific funding profiles based on the data gathered as part of the G-FINDER survey.

G-FINDER 2019 key findings: EU funding of poverty-related and neglected disease R&D. This fact sheet provides a brief summary of the 2018 funding for neglected disease R&D provided by the European Commission, through Horizon 2020 and the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP). It breaks down changes in the balance of European Union funding between EDCTP and Horizon 2020 programmes and provides a summary of the allocation of EU funding across individual diseases and stages of R&D.

The findings from Policy Cures Research’s report Global funding for snakebite envenoming research 2007-2018, commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, were presented at the third Snakebites Funders Forum, hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London on 15 November 2019.

The findings explore the results of the first ever survey on global investment of snakebite research, which was conducted as part of this project. The project was based on the G-FINDER survey of neglected disease biomedical R&D, which was expanded to include snakebite-related operational, implementation and health systems and policy research, based on the areas of interest identified by the Wellcome Trust and a panel of independent international experts.

The survey collected 12 years of data (2007 to 2018), allowing for time-series analysis. This report provides an overview of the landscape of researchers active in snakebite envenoming research and explores trends across the 12-year period, highlighting areas of unmet need.

Snakebite envenoming was also included in the G-FINDER survey for neglected diseases for the first time in 2019. Investment in biomedical R&D for snakebite envenoming will continue to be tracked by G-FINDER in future years.

Policy Cures Research, together with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, the Innovative Vector Control Consortium, the Medicines for Malaria Venture, and the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme, contributed to this 2018 report developed by Malaria No More UK, PATH and the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, which looks at global funding for malaria R&D over the last decade, and highlights gaps in financial reporting and monitoring tools to document funding for malaria research for implementation. The report covers findings from a pilot study on malaria research for implementation funding, which includes implementation research, operational research, and health systems research. It highlights the importance of improving coordination across intervention areas, developing more innovative funding approaches and continuing existing tracking of funding flows.

The report expands on an interim PCR publication, released earlier in 2018, titled Investigating a Second Valley of Death in Malaria R&D: How is research for implementation funded? This earlier report focused on the critical role played by implementation research, operational research, and health systems research in both shaping the development of new health technologies so they are designed for the conditions in which they will be used, and ensuring that they are introduced in the right place, at the right time, and in the right quantities.

Policy Cures Research worked with the Global Health Technologies Coalition to publish a joint report on Return on Innovation in July 2017, examining the return on investment for the United States from its support of global health R&D.

The report explores the investments made and the role played by key US institutions such as the Agency for International Development, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control, the achievements made with the help of US investments, and how this investment has contributed to a pipeline of products to address global health needs. The report finds that US government investment of around $14 billion in R&D for global health has been a smart investment, delivering economic and security returns for Americans while playing an essential role as a catalyst for the development of new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other urgently-needed tools for fighting neglected disease.