G-FINDER 2023 Neglected Disease Research & Development report: The Higher Cost of Lower Funding

By Policy Cures Research (now Impact Global Health) 31 January 2024

45 min read
Neglected DiseasesHIV/AIDSTuberculosisMalaria

What's coming to transform the prevention, treatment and diagnosis of neglected diseases?

This report contains an overview of the changes in neglected disease funding in 2022 and, for the first time, adds comprehensive coverage of the product pipeline in each disease area.

After several years of relative stability, funding for neglected disease R&D fell by 10% in 2022

Global funding for basic research and product development for neglected diseases in 2022 was $3,931m, a drop of $446m (-10%) from 2021. Most individual disease areas saw reductions in funding in 2022, with several – including Buruli ulcer, trachoma and kinetoplastid diseases – experiencing record lows. Even non-disease specific funding, which had grown every year since 2014, fell by 8.2%, mostly as a result of reduced core funding to multi-disease R&D organisations. Only six areas experienced any growth at all: funding for hepatitis B jumped by $14m (87%) to a record high; helminth R&D increased by $11m (12%); diarrhoeal diseases by $7.9m (5.3%); Salmonella by $5.8m (7.8%); leprosy by $3.7m (37%); and snakebite by $2.6m (14%). Much of the fall in overall funding was the result of increased global inflation in 2022

An analysis of the pipeline asks whether there are now enough promising candidates in clinical development to satisfy the wide range of unmet needs for neglected diseases

The number of products in the neglected disease pipeline has risen by 55% since 2015, with growth across almost all product categories. The addition of pipeline analysis in the 2022 report provides valuable context for interpreting funding totals against the actual state of products in development. Each product, other than vector control, has seen measurable growth in the number of candidates in development, with the biggest increases in vaccines (up 78 candidates overall, 38%) and biologics (up 57 candidates, 713% since their 2017 inclusion). There has also there been a maturation of the pipeline for drugs, vaccines, biologics and microbicides, with candidates moving from discovery & preclinical development into clinical trials. Since 2015, there has been a striking inversion in the share of products in discovery & preclinical phases (which fell from 56% in 2015 to 40% in 2023) and those in clinical development (from 44% in 2015 to 60% in 2023). This indicates that, overall, products have been advancing through the pipeline more swiftly than new early-stage candidates have entered. The key question is whether there are now enough promising candidates in clinical development to satisfy the wide range of unmet needs for neglected diseases, especially given the high levels of attrition inevitable during clinical stage testing: half of the products in the 2019 pipeline were inactive by 2023 and only 8.0% reached Phase III trials. If we exhaust our current clinical pipeline without finding all the products we need, then not having seeded the early stages of the pipeline with a buffer of new investigational candidates will mean a long delay before the next batch of potential products is ready to progress.

PDF of the executive summary PDF of the reportWatch the launch event

Table of contents

  1. What's coming to transform the prevention, treatment and diagnosis of neglected diseases?
  2. After several years of relative stability, funding for neglected disease R&D fell by 10% in 2022
  3. An analysis of the pipeline asks whether there are now enough promising candidates in clinical development to satisfy the wide range of unmet needs for neglected diseases