CleveXel And Guilin To Co-Develop 2 Anti-Malarial Products
France-based firm CleveXel Pharma and Chinese company Guilin Pharmaceutical have joined forces to co-develop two new anti-malarial products.
Under the terms of the partnership agreement, Guilin will make development milestone payments as well as net-sales-based royalty to CleveXel for its development efforts. The companies will work towards increasing anti-malarial manufacturing across three active units, which include an adult and pediatric formulation. Risks and development costs will be evenly distributed between each partner. The same applies to expected commercial profits and relevant royalties.
Christian Bloy, CEO of CleveXel Pharma, said, “CleveXel Pharma will use its innovative formulation development, including process optimization and industrial transfer, on these new projects. We are delighted to further collaborate with Guilin Pharmaceutical, which leads the way in anti-malarials for the Chinese and African markets.”
Commenting on the partnership, Guilin Pharmaceutical chairman Zhemin Yu, said, “We are very happy to collaborate with CleveXel Pharma and to gain access to its development expertise.”
Malaria continues to put half of the world’s population – approximately 3.4 billion people – at risk. Those who live in the world’s poorest countries are at the greatest danger. In 2012, the World Health Organization recorded that 90 percent of all malaria deaths took place in African regions, mostly striking children below 5 years old.
Both partners acknowledge that the market for anti-malarials is “competitive and highly time-sensitive,” a fact mirrored by the global race to produce the world’s first anti-malaria vaccine. The main target of the WHO ‘Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap’ is to have a licensed vaccine against the most deadly form of the disease, the Plasmodium falciparum malaria, for children in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015.
While we are still a year away from the WHO target deadline, there has been progress made on the way to an approved vaccine. Recently, GlaxoSmithKline submitted an application for the first-ever approval of a vaccine against malaria. The vaccine candidate was developed by pharma firm GlaxoSmithKline in collaboration with Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Results show that the vaccine could prevent 800 malaria cases for every 1,000 children who were inoculated. GSK’s vaccine is on track to win approval as early as next year.
In a further effort to combat malaria, last month, PATH also collaborated with global pharma company Sanofi for the delivery of an anti-malaria drug shipment to African countries that have been hit hard by the disease.