Last year OneWorld Health teamed up with Novartis to research anti-diarrheal drugs for children.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

OneWorld Health is currently developing medicines for diarrheal diseases, malaria, visceral leishmaniasis and soil-transmitted helminthes (intestinal worms).

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

Novartis researchers investigate possible drugs, and share the results with OneWorld Health, which tests the drugs further.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

In an effort to fix that imbalance, in 2000 Victoria Hale, a former FDA official, founded the Institute for OneWorld Health.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

OneWorld Health is a non-profit pharmaceutical company that works with foundations, private sector companies and governments to develop drugs for diseases of poverty.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

We also have an Access program that works to ensure that the treatments OneWorld Health develops are available and acceptable to at-risk patients at an affordable cost via private and public sector markets.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

OneWorld Health chooses most projects strategically, based on a variety of factors including the disease area and identified therapeutic needs within that area, the technical feasibility of the project and its probability of success, its current development stage (e.g. discovery stage vs. clinical stage) and the potential impact.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?

As a group, PDPs like OneWorld Health, Medicines for Malaria Venture, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, and the Foundation for Innovative Diagnostics target diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, Chagas, HIV and AIDS, and soil-transmitted helminthiasis, a group of parasitic infections caused by worms.

FORBES: Can Non-Profit Drug Companies Cure Diseases of Poverty?