Why invest in MMV?
Leveraging partnerships
The power of partnership has been at the heart of MMV’s vision ever since it was founded in 1999. As a ‘virtual’ organisation, all of MMV’s R&D, access and delivery activities are undertaken in collaboration with partner organizations across the world. Pharmaceutical and biotech partners bring expertise and facilities in drug discovery and development, including access to cutting-edge technologies. In the public sector, academic research institutions bring scientific research expertise and facilities in areas ranging from basic biology to clinical medicine and field expertise.
Downstream of R&D, MMV works to make its new antimalarials accessible to vulnerable populations, and collaborates with organizations such as Ministries of Health, the World Health Organization, private industry, NGOs and philanthropists. MMV also supports global consortia such as Roll Back Malaria and the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria, to coordinate action on the eradication of malaria.
Spending wisely
MMV ensures that donors’ money is spent to the maximum effect and thus manages its drug R&D from discovery to registration using rigorous and demanding standards of quality and time, in a similar way to the pharmaceutical industry.
In November 2009, MMV was reviewed by FasterCures, an independent nonprofit ‘action tank’ based in New York. FasterCures offers a Philanthropy Advisory Service which helps philanthropists make informed decisions about where to invest in the nonprofit sector. On three critical categories of ‘accountability’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘research effectiveness’, MMV was evaluated as demonstrating an ‘outstanding and strong’ performance. On financials, of the US$55.8 million spent by MMV in 2008, expenditure on our core activities of R&D and access projects amounted to just under 90%. The review stated, ‘MMV is an important contributor to efforts to set and advance the Malaria Eradication Agenda…the organization is helping to drive the scientific direction of the field as a whole.’
MMV continues to take good care that every dollar of donors’ money is well spent on discovering, developing and delivering new antimalarials to under-served populations in disease-endemic countries.
