Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has opened a non-profit research institute in northern Italy to develop vaccines for neglected diseases prevalent in the developing world.

Diarrhoeal diseases cause more deaths in children under five than malaria and AIDS together.

The new Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health is based in Siena, the home of Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics. It will be managed independently of the commercial vaccine company and will have its own team, focusing initially on diarrhoeal diseases that have been overlooked by the major research funders. “Diarrhoeal diseases cause more deaths per year among children under five than malaria and AIDS together,” says Rino Rappuoli, global head of vaccine research at Novartis, who has been the force behind the venture.

Rappuoli has spent his entire career in vaccine research, joining the Sclavo Institute in Siena 30 years ago, and seeing it through its takeover by Chiron in 1992 and then by Novartis two years ago. “I've had to develop vaccines for the rich world, where our customers are — but I knew how easily our technology and knowledge could be applied to vaccines for the poor world,” he says.

The new institute will be headed by Allan Saul, who led the malaria vaccine programme at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases before moving to Novartis last year. The plan is to develop a polyvalent vaccine (effective against more than one strain) for three forms of Salmonella infection and a polyvalent vaccine for Shigella and ETEC (enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli). Over the next few years, other diseases will be targeted.

Choosing the diseases to focus on was tricky, Saul says. “We started with a list of 57 and whittled it down to a short list of five — all diarrhoeal diseases — where we thought we could get the best return on investment: these diseases kill millions each year, and we can build on existing basic research.”

The institute complements the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases, another non-profit organization founded five years ago in Singapore to develop drugs for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and dengue fever. The vaccine institute hopes to recruit up to 20 scientists by 2009, and eventually to have around 80 staff working on four programmes. Novartis will pay the institute's staff and running costs, but most of its project money will have to be sought from other sources, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.