South Africa will use a new "patent pool" to work on new drugs for tuberculosis and malaria, making it the first government to take advantage of the industry-led idea. The pool aims to speed development of drugs for neglected tropical diseases by freely sharing patented information owned by drug companies and academic institutions.

Mamphela Ramphele, chairwoman of the South African Technology Innovation Agency, said on Wednesday her agency will use the patents and know-how provided through the pool set up last year by GlaxoSmithKline. The pool contains more than 2,300 patents that are available for use by industry, non-profit groups and academic researchers to develop new medicines for malaria, cholera and more than a dozen other diseases.

"TB is a devastating disease for the people of South Africa, particularly with the compromised immune status of many South Africans because of HIV-AIDS. We are extremely anxious to be able to produce new drugs to address this disease," Ramphele told reporters at the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in Chicago. She said 1,500 people die of TB every day in South Africa, where 200,000 people are infected with HIV.

"This patent pool is an enormous boost for us to have a significant impact in South Africa," said Ramphele. Her agency will coordinate and nurture drug development among local companies, including the South African firm iThemba Pharmaceuticals, which has already announced plans to use the pool to do research into new TB drugs.

The pool now includes patents and other resources from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the Emory Institute for Drug Discovery, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which on Wednesday said it would contribute to the pool. The measures are targeted at 50 nations considered the world's least developed, many in Africa.

Sharing Know-How

Melinda Moree, chief executive of BIO Ventures for Global Health, which runs the effort, says the pool not only provides free use of patents, but also know-how and expertise.

"Frankly, expertise and know-how are often some of the more valuable aspects of drug development, and also things that companies don't usually share," she said in an interview. "This pool has both of these things (patents and expertise), which I think makes it fairly unusual."

Moree said other large drug companies are interested in signing up to the pool, but would not name them. The pool contains patents for compounds that have a potential to be developed into drugs.

"The entire premise of the pool is really about opening up the innovation process around drug development for neglected disease. Millions of people are suffering from them every day. Drug development has lacked. Tens of millions of people are too poor to pay for the drugs," Moree told the briefing. "This is really a step on the part of industry to try a new model around one of the things that has sparked contentious debate around intellectual property," she said.

Pharmaceutical companies have drawn fire for fiercely backing patents that blocked cheaper competitors, even in the poorest countries, where brand-name medicines were unaffordable. Glaxo and others have responded by selling AIDS drugs in certain areas without a profit and offering licenses to generic makers.