About us
Overview
Our mission is to reduce the burden of malaria in disease-endemic countries by discovering, developing and facilitating delivery of new, effective and affordable antimalarial drugs.
Our vision is a world in which these innovative medicines will cure and protect the vulnerable and under-served populations at risk of malaria, and help to ultimately eradicate this terrible disease.
MMV manages a portfolio of over 65 antimalarial medicines, the largest ever assembled. With partners, we have brought forward 15 medicines that are treating patients. These medicines have saved over 3 million lives. Read some of their stories.
Our business model
Product Development Partnerships (PDPs) address the lack of commercial incentive to develop tools to combat diseases of the Global South. PDPs use donor funds to engage the pharmaceutical industry and research institutions in undertaking R&D for diseases that they would normally be unable or unwilling to pursue independently, without additional incentives.
The PDP acts as a conductor of a large orchestra of partners, bringing dedicated sources of funding and know-how to committed researchers to share and minimize risk, and maximize value. The PDP itself does not often undertake development projects in-house; instead, it relies on its partners for financing and other in-kind contributions (i.e. laboratories and expertise) and it itself allocates resources to the most promising projects, coordinates partner activities for various stages of the R&D process, and manages the project portfolio.
Since their founding in the late 1990’s, the small community of PDPs have delivered more than 65 new health technologies that have protected and saved the lives of 2.4 billion people. (See Keeping the Promise PDP Report for more information).
The objectives of individual PDPs vary, but the basic mission is the same: to develop pharmaceutical products for use as a public good to address the health needs of the Global South.
Our history
In 1999, the pipeline for new antimalarials was virtually empty, and the drugs in use no longer worked. The possibility of profit in antimalarial drug development was considered too low to attract pharmaceutical investment. Malaria was killing around 1 million people a year - most of them children under 5 and pregnant women from the poorest regions of the world.
Motivated by this glaring inequity, and the need to act in the face of a projected public health disaster due to escalating drug resistance, MMV was created. MMV was launched on 3 November 1999, with initial seed finance of US$ 4 million from the Government of Switzerland, UK Department for International Development, the Government of the Netherlands, The World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation.