BUSPH Faculty and Students Release New Report Outlining Pharma Development in Europe.

Two BUSPH faculty members and several current and former students collaborated on a major policy and strategy report that provides a blueprint for pharmaceutical development throughout Europe.

Priority Medicines for Europe and the World 2013 — written in part by Warren Kaplan, an assistant professor of international health, and Veronika Wirtz, an associate professor of international health — was accepted by the European Commission and launched in a meeting in Brussels on July 9.

Kaplan and Wirtz are members of a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center in Pharmaceutical Policy operated out of the BU Center for Global Health & Development (CGHD). The report also used background papers from current and former students Maxine Emma Lodato, Vicki Wong, Lily Smith, Rachel Wittenauer, René Soria Saucedo, Paul Ashigbie, Nga Tong, and Clara Setiawan.

This publication provides a blueprint for drug development in Europe, and is expected to influence investment by pharmaceutical companies and national governments. The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations praised the report in its press release, calling it a “…  valuable guide for all research communities, from industry to academia, in determining research agendas….”

Areas targeted for research investment are those in which pharmaceutical “gaps” exist, either where there is no current treatment or the treatment could be improved, such as developing heat-stable forms of insulin and oxytocin.  These concerns include common conditions affecting Europe and the world — antimicrobial resistance, diabetes, cancer, depression, etc. — as well as those more common in low- and middle-income countries: infectious tropical diseases, malaria, maternal and perinatal conditions.  The report also emphasizes further areas for collaborative partnerships, such as newer models of pharmaceutical innovation that include open-source, public-private partnerships; new pathways for pharmaceutical regulation; and increased patient involvement in pharmaceutical R&D funding decisions.

This 2013 report is an update of the landmark 2004 Priority Medicines for Europe and the World report, written in part by Kaplan and Richard Laing of the World Health Organization, formerly a professor of international health at BUSPH. Laing also served as the principal investigator of this 2013 update.

Earlier this year, the CGHD was re-designated as a WHO Collaborative Center in Pharmaceutical Policy, a status that will be in effect until 2016. The re-designation extends a working relationship that has existed for more than a decade and continues the commitment of CGHD to support WHO in research and education on pharmaceuticals.

The CGHD is currently collaborating with the WHO in a series of topics such as intellectual property rights, governance and local production of essential medicines and other pharmaceuticals. It also assists WHO in promoting quality of pharmaceutical care in health delivery systems with focus on low- and middle-income countries.