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Vaccine candidates for poor nations are going to waste

Promising immunizations for diseases that affect mostly people in low- and middle-income countries need help getting to market, urge David C. Kaslow and colleagues.
  1. David C. Kaslow

    1. David C. Kaslow is vice-president for essential medicines at PATH, Seattle, Washington, USA.

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  2. Steve Black

    1. Steve Black is professor of paediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati, USA.

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  3. David E. Bloom

    1. David E. Bloom is professor of economics and demography at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

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  4. Mahima Datla

    1. Mahima Datla is managing director of Biological E Limited, Hyderabad, India.

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  5. David Salisbury

    1. David Salisbury is an associate fellow at the Centre on Global Health Security, Chatham House, London.

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  6. Rino Rappuoli

    1. Rino Rappuoli is chief scientist at GlaxoSmithKline, Siena, Italy; and professor of vaccinology at Imperial College London.

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Women in a hospital ward with malaria bed nets in Bunia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Some 240 vaccine candidates are currently in the development pipeline for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and pneumonia — conditions that predominantly affect people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Just two that made it through the pipeline in recent years are widely used in these nations: a conjugate vaccine for meningitis serogroup A diseases (see ‘Game changers’) and a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis virus.

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Nature 564, 337-339 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07758-3

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Competing Interests

S.B. is a consultant for GSK, Takeda and Sutrovax.

D.E.B. has been in receipt of grants, travel grants, and/or personal fees from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, Merck, Pfizer, GSK, Sanofi Pasteur, and Sanofi Pasteur-MSD (all related to his research on the value of vaccination).

M.D. is currently employed by a vaccine manufacturer, Biological E.

D.S. has acted as a paid consultant to vaccine manufacturers and was Chair of WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts 2006–10. He was Director of Immunisation at the Department of Health, London, until 2013.

R.R. is currently a full-time employee of GSK group of companies.

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