In 2023, Johnson & Johnson announced it had stopped research and development on therapeutics for many infectious diseases, including hepatitis and tuberculosis. Less visibly, AbbVie shuttered last year its pro bono technical R&D support on infectious diseases such as malaria and Chagas disease.
These are not isolated cases. An increasing number of large pharmaceutical companies from the Global North are leaving the field of R&D for infectious disease therapeutics to move to more lucrative areas, particularly cancer, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune, and rare (but highly profitable) diseases. This trend is not new — it has been consistent over the past two decades — but it is accelerating.
I’m the R&D director of a nonprofit research organization that was created 20 years ago in response to pharma’s insufficient investment in developing anti-infectives. Over the years, we have built a successful model of collaboration with public and private partners to develop new medicines for infectious diseases that are usually neglected by commercially driven R&D investments.
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