Medicines for Malaria Venture

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) is a not-for-profit public-private partnership that was established as a foundation in Switzerland in 1999. Its main mission is to reduce malaria in disease-endemic countries by developing and facilitating the delivery of antimalarial drugs.

History

MMV was launched in 1999, with initial seed funding of US$4 million from the Government of Switzerland, the Department for International Development (UK), the Government of the Netherlands, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Governance

MMV is governed by a board of directors. The Chairman of MMV is Mr Alan Court.^[1] MMV has a board of directors in North America, an Expert Scientific Advisory Committee which helps to identify projects, an Access & Product Management Advisory Committee and a Global Safety Board which reviews projects.^[2]

Projects

MMV's project portfolio states that their goals are:

• Effective treatment against drug-resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum
• The potential for intermittent treatments (infants and pregnancy)
• Safety for small children (less than 6 months old)
• Safety in pregnancy
• Effective treatment against Plasmodium vivax (including radical cure)
• Effective treatment against severe malaria
• and transmission-blocking treatment.

Open Source Malaria

MMV started the Open Source Malaria project,^[3] which encourages people to share procedures and results of open source research.^[4] The Open Source Malaria, with researchers at the University of Sydney, supervised high school students at Sydney Grammar School who adapted a synthesis of Daraprim (pyrimethamine) using a less hazardous method.^[5][6]