Partnering to prevent, cure and eliminate malaria
Mr Alan Court
Chairman of the Board
The people most at risk of malaria-related morbidity and mortality remain at the heart of Medicines for Malaria Venture’s mission, which aims to cure and protect underserved populations and develop the tools to enable malaria elimination.
Last year, despite progress in expanding access to malaria medicines, global cases and deaths remained above pre-pandemic levels. Unprecedented global challenges are taking their toll on global health, from climate change, conflicts and humanitarian crises to biological threats. To better respond to these challenges, MMV’s new 2024–2030 Strategy charts a bold yet achievable path for the next 7 years. Its focus remains on staying ahead of drug resistance and delivering transformational, longer-acting and more convenient therapies for treatment and prevention to enhance the feasibility and impact of malaria control and elimination efforts. In parallel, it explicitly aligns MMV’s efforts and impact with the key organizational principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, equitable partnerships, and with climate considerations, across all activities.
The 24th edition of our annual report outlines how MMV and partners responded to these challenges in 2023 to protect more children and pregnant women, contribute towards malaria elimination, push back against resistance and strengthen equitable partnerships through capacity building and open science initiatives, continuing to work towards the goal of a malaria-free world.
Impact
For the past 25 years, MMV and partners have brought forward 16 quality medicines, which have saved around 15.4 million lives.
Real-life stories
Curing malaria: Amos’s story
Amos arrived at St Paul’s Hospital in the Zambian district of Nchelenge severely ill with malaria and strapped to his father’s back. His father had walked to the hospital from their home in Mulumba village, an hour away on foot.
The medicine Amos received was rectal artesunate, a ‘pre-referral’ intervention used to buy time for patients living in rural communities to travel to higher-level healthcare facilities. Once at the facility, patients receive intravenous treatment and follow-up care.
Preventing malaria: Ismaël and Foussena’s story
Ismaël is a 4-year-old boy who lives in a small village in Central Togo with his mother Foussena and baby sister Somia. Like many children in sub-Saharan Africa, Ismaël has fallen ill with malaria.
Seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) is an intervention administered in areas where malaria is highly seasonal, meaning cases increase significantly during the rainy season.
Community health workers go door to door administering doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine + amodiaquine (SPAQ) each month during the malaria season to protect children from contracting the disease. Both Somia and Ismaël are among the 53 million children in 18 countries who receive SMC each year.
Eliminating malaria: Tackling relapsing malaria in the Amazon
In June 2023, Brazil became the first malaria-endemic country to incorporate tafenoquine and quantitative glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) testing into its health system nationwide for the treatment of relapsing Plasmodium vivax malaria for patients at least 16 years old. The decision was based on a review of evidence on the safety and efficacy, real-world feasibility, cost-effectiveness and budget impact of introduction by CONITEC, the Brazilian Commission of Technology Incorporation in the Public Health System.
This year, the Yanomami Indigenous people, in Roraima, became the first patients in Brazil to receive tafenoquine and point-of-care G6PD testing for P. vivax malaria, the rollout is now being extended to other areas.
Our response
Curing malaria
With annual malaria cases and deaths stalling since the pandemic and the emergence of antimalarial drug resistance, now more than ever, transformational, longer-acting and more convenient therapies are urgently needed to reverse this trend.
Preventing malaria
Infants, children and pregnant women remain at considerably higher risk of contracting malaria and developing a severe, life-threatening form of the disease. Children under 5, primarily in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region, still account for over 462,000 of all global malaria deaths annually, while 12.7 million pregnancies in the same region were exposed to malaria infection in 2022.
Eliminating malaria
The end goal of all malaria treatment and prevention activities is elimination. Together with novel transmission blocking products, single-dose cures and profiling new molecules, multiple tools are needed to support population level interventions. In 2023, MMV and partners progressed in the discovery, development and delivery of efficacious and well-tolerated antimalarial medicines to bolster elimination efforts and to simplify access and delivery for innovative treatments.
Beyond malaria
MMV and partners have delivered over 30 candidate drugs since 2008 and transformed the clinical development portfolio for malaria. Now, MMV intends to use its internal drug discovery expertise and capabilities to serve diseases beyond malaria with unmet discovery and medical needs. This work has emerged from MMV’s accomplishments and lessons learnt from malaria.
Research
Translational
Product
development
Access
Research
Translational
Product development
Access
Antimalarial pipeline
Our antimalarial portfolio is the largest ever assembled and comprises 16 compounds in clinical development targeting unmet medical needs, including medicines for children, pregnant women and people suffering from drug-resistant malaria. In 2023, MMV’s Expert Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC) endorsed two drug discovery projects, including the novel compound CMQ069, discovered through a Calibr-Skaggs/MMV collaboration and named MMV’s 2023 Project of the Year. Moving forward, MMV’s vision is to be a leading product development partner in the use of machine learning to impact product delivery and quality, ultimately shortening the time it takes to identify compounds that meet demanding target product profiles
Financials
Medicines for Malaria Venture receives sustained funding and support from government agencies, private foundations, international organizations, corporations, corporate foundations and private individuals.
These funds are used to finance MMV’s portfolio of R&D projects as well as specific, targeted access and delivery interventions aimed at making it easier for underserved populations to gain access to life-saving medicines.
Donors
MMV is grateful for the support in 2023 from individual donors as well as the following institutional donors:
Credits
Editors: Elizabeth Poll and Nicola Hardie (MMV); Bradley Castelli
Design: ComStone – Pierre Chassany
Photos from top to bottom: Cover: SMC in Togo (Marcus Hebbelmann); Intro: Alan Court; Real-life stories: Amos Mutobola (Damien Schumann), Ismaël and Foussena (Marcus Hebbelmann), Tafenoquine clinical trial (Fundação de Medicina Tropical); Our response: Curing malaria (Maud Majeres Lugan), Preventing Malaria (Damien Schumann), Eliminating malaria (Rawpixel), Beyond malaria (Elizabeth Poll).