Product Development Partnerships: A Proven Model for Delivering Innovation in Global Health Reform
Key Insights
Product development partnerships have delivered more than 79 novel health tools to 2.4 billion people over nearly 30 years, prioritizing public health over market returns.
PDPs address diseases neglected by traditional pharmaceutical development, including malaria (search), sleeping sickness (search), neonatal infections, and drug-resistant bacterial infections.
Landmark PDP achievements include acoziborole for sleeping sickness (search), Coartem Baby (search) for infant malaria (search), and zoliflodacin for drug-resistant gonorrhea (search).
As the global health architecture faces mounting pressure to reform, experts are calling for a clear-eyed recognition that scaling innovation must remain a core function of any restructured system. In a commentary published by Project Syndicate, leaders from three major product development partnerships (PDPs) argue that improving coordination and delivery while neglecting innovation risks creating a system that is "better organized but not more effective."
The authors—representing the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), the Medicines for Malaria Venture (search) (MMV), and the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP)—contend that today's health challenges cannot be met with "yesterday's tools," particularly as drug resistance rises, pathogens evolve, and too many populations remain unable to access new medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics.
The PDP Model: Innovation as a Global Public Good
Product development partnerships are nonprofit organizations that bring together public, private, academic, philanthropic, and civil-society actors to develop drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for pressing global health challenges. These challenges—ranging from malaria (search) and neglected diseases to neonatal infections and drug-resistant bacterial infections—cause immense human suffering but fall outside the scope of traditional market-driven pharmaceutical development due to high costs and uncertain returns.
"Governments, for their part, lack the capacity or will to move these technologies all the way through the development pipeline," the authors note. PDPs close this gap by operating on a not-for-profit basis, taking risks that commercial actors cannot and prioritizing public health over market returns. This realignment of incentives, they argue, treats innovation as a global public good.
The track record is substantial: over nearly 30 years, PDPs have delivered more than 79 novel health tools to 2.4 billion people, reaching at-risk populations—including children, newborns, pregnant women, and people living in low-resource settings—who are least likely to benefit from medical advances.
Breakthroughs That Demonstrate the Model's Impact
The commentary highlights three landmark achievements that illustrate how PDPs translate scientific possibility into real-world solutions.
Acoziborole, a single-dose oral drug for sleeping sickness (search) developed by DNDi, has paved the way for the elimination of this deadly disease by improving treatment for patients in remote areas where healthcare infrastructure is limited.
Coartem Baby (search), developed through a partnership between MMV and Novartis, represents the first and only antimalarial specifically formulated for babies weighing 2–5 kilograms, addressing a critical treatment gap for one of the most vulnerable populations.
Zoliflodacin, an antibiotic co-developed by GARDP, is the first new treatment in decades to be developed solely for drug-resistant gonorrhea (search)—described as "one of the world's most urgent and neglected antimicrobial threats."
Integrating Discovery to Delivery
A distinguishing feature of the PDP model is its ability to work across the full continuum from discovery to delivery, integrating functions that are "too often treated separately elsewhere in the global health system." PDPs collaborate not only with governments but also with the private sector, research organizations, and communities, enabling them to engage with national priorities, conduct trials in high-burden settings, and ensure that new products are relevant, affordable, and usable in real-world contexts.
As the global health community shifts toward country leadership, the authors argue that PDPs "illustrate how this can be achieved in practice, through partnership rather than prescription." They note that a more challenging funding environment makes such an approach "even more essential to maintaining progress."
Evolving for the Future
The three organizations behind the commentary—DNDi, MMV, and GARDP—acknowledge that no single model is a "magic bullet" and that PDPs themselves must continue to evolve. They have committed to deepening their ties to pool expertise and resources, adapt to new scientific and technological opportunities, reduce duplication, and ensure accountability to the communities they serve.
"A country-led global health system must still deliver essential outputs like innovation, which can be achieved by strengthening the mechanisms that already work," the authors conclude. "This is not an optional add-on: without new medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics, today's gains will not be sustained, and tomorrow's needs will go unmet."