Simon Croft, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that Several worldwide pharmaceutical firms such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck and GSK are currently developing vaccines for infectious and tropical diseases. Over the last 15 years, those companies collaborated with academic researchers and private or public organizations to significantly reduce the diagnosis of such diseases. But regardless of such efforts, the participants in the forum agreed that there is more to be done.
B.T. Slingsby, the CEO of the Global Hearth Innovative Technology Fund, a Japan-based organization to promote global partnership for the development of drugs for emerging countries, said that the world is still suffering from the lack of effective vaccines for many infectious diseases because such products "are not profitable." In fact, infectious disease vaccines are not suitable for large-lot production, because such diseases are not as common as those such as cancer and diabetes. Profits of vaccine sales sometimes are not sufficient to 'offset' the large amount of development costs of the medicine.
(source: THE JAPAN TIMES, March 30, 2016)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/30/general/high-mortality-infectious-diseases-require-global-focus-2/#.VxRBiXxf3IU
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