"We are very honored to be named as a Business Leader of the Scientific American 50," stated Victoria Hale, Ph.D., founder and CEO of OneWorld Health. "Through the unique business model of a nonprofit pharmaceutical company, we are able to target diseases of the poorest people in the world, where the development of new medicines is clearly not profitable. By creating collaborative partnerships among industry, academia, foundations, and the nonprofit sectors, we are addressing some of the world's most devastating diseases. As a result, we can develop new medicines and save lives of people most in need."
The 2004 Scientific American 50 will appear in Scientific American's December issue, available at newsstands on Nov. 23. Editor-In-Chief John Rennie described his magazine's commitment saying, "Scientific American believes strongly that the best hope for a safer, healthier, more prosperous world rests in the enlightened use of technology. The Scientific American 50 is our annual opportunity to salute the people and organizations making that possible through their outstanding efforts as leaders of research, industry and policymaking."
Proving the viability of OneWorld Health's business model, Dr. Hale announced today preliminary positive results of a Phase III clinical trial in India for a low-cost drug to cure a deadly parasitic disease, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) during a scientific session at the 53rd annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) in Miami, Fla. VL kills approximately 200,000 people each year, mostly in the Indian subcontinent. Treatments today are expensive, toxic, or ineffective.
OneWorld Health expects to lower the cost per cure to about US$10 per adult treatment compared with current therapies which cost up to US$200. Regulatory approval will be sought in India in 2005.
The Institute for OneWorld Health, the first U.S. nonprofit pharmaceutical company develops new, affordable medicines for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect people in the developing world. OneWorld Health applies its entrepreneurial business model with a staff of experienced pharmaceutical scientists who identifies promising leads and drives development from pre-clinical studies to clinical trials through regulatory approval. The Institute for OneWorld Health, headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., is a tax-exempt 501(c) (3), U.S. corporation (www.oneworldhealth.org).
Founded in 1845, editorial contributors to Scientific American have included over 100 Nobel laureates, among them Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Francis Crick, Stanley Prusiner and Harold Varmus. Scientific American, Inc. is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, a U.S. subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a privately held international media corporation operating in more than 40 countries. In addition to Scientific American, Holtzbrinck Publishers includes the book publishing houses Farrar, Straus & Giroux; W.H. Freeman; Henry Holt and Company; St. Martin's Press and Tor; the academic scholarly publishing company Palgrave U.S.; the College Publishing Group of Bedford Freeman Worth; and the distribution company VHPS.