
Nonprofits lead the way on Marburg vaccines – POLITICO
That’s because vaccines for diseases like Marburg have been notoriously hard to develop, making them a costly prospect. And with outbreaks happening sporadically and in predominantly poor countries, big drug companies feel little financial incentive to get involved.
“There basically is no profitable market for it, which is one reason why large companies are not involved,” Mark Feinberg, CEO of nonprofit vaccine developer IAVI, told POLITICO.
Groups like IAVI are working to turn promising scientific discoveries in infectious diseases into affordable and life-saving treatments and vaccines, filling the gap left by the private sector. It’s a trend that has gained pace in recent decades, with nonprofits either helping to fund the development of promising therapies in labs and small firms, or pursuing their development themselves.
The Sabin Vaccine Institute falls into this latter category. The institute acquired the rights to a Marburg vaccine candidate from GSK in 2019 and developed it with $235 million in funding from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for research targeting Ebola and Marburg vaccines.
It’s an approach that flips the traditional market model — of Big Pharma buying up promising candidates for clinical development — on its head. But it’s working for neglected diseases: The institute delivered 700 doses of its vaccine candidate to the Rwanda Biomedical Centre over the weekend for a trial in frontline health workers, who have been among the most vulnerable in the outbreak.
“I have no reason to believe that we won’t continue to be able to respond at this rate,” Sabin CEO Amy Finan told POLITICO, citing the rapid turnaround between an initial request from Rwanda and the arrival of vaccines 10 days later.