The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), founded in 1999 as a public-private partnership, seeks to discover, develop and deliver new antimalarial drugs suitable for use in developing countries. MMV now manages the largest portfolio of malaria drug research in history with 21 projects in different developmental stages. Its objective is to develop one new antimalarial every 5 years with the first one registered before 2010. With a number of drugs in phase II and III clinical trials, it's likely that its goal will be reached well before the end of the decade. Its 39 R&D partners include academic research institutes, biotech firms and pharmaceutical companies. Large pharmaceutical partners include Glaxo-SmithKline, Novartis, Bayer, Roche, and Ranbaxy. Its annual budget is around $25 million dollars and in-kind contributions from the industry partners total at least the mirror amount. Capital financing for drug discovery activities comes mostly from public sources and the industry contributions are primarily contributions in-kind, e.g., management expertise, access to chemical libraries, high throughput screening and data handling. MMV's funding comes from various foundations, donor governments and corporations with the largest contribution from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The World Health Organization and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership also consider MMV an important partner in its fight to control and defeat malaria.

The projects that are in clinical trials include chlorproguanil-dapsone-artesunate with GSK, Pediatric Coartem® with Novartis, Artemisone with Bayer.

Artekin® International Development Program

In March 2004 Chongqing Holley Holding, a Chinese pharmaceutical company, Sigma-Tau, an Italian pharmaceutical company, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), a nonprofit organization and University of Oxford signed an agreement for the international development of Dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (Artekin®). If successful, this antimalarial drug will be one of the few drugs in history developed primarily for a disease of the poor. Malaria mortality and morbidity are on the rise due to the growing problem of drug resistance and there is an urgent need to replenish the diminishing pipeline of effective and affordable medicines. The goal is not only to produce an effective drug, but also to make it available it at a cost that's affordable for people living on less than a dollar a day. Representing a new generation of antimalarial drug, Artekin® is a fixed dose combination drug made up of dihydroartemisinin, a derivative of artemisinin, and piperaquine. Artemisinin is extracted from Artemisia herb, a traditional medicine with a 2000-year history. It is especially potent against malaria as it acts very quickly without the side effects of many other antimalarials. In addition, there are no known cases of resistance to artemisinin so far. A combination drug further reduces the chances of resistance and improves its efficacy.