# A non-profit pharmaceutical company for the cancers markets ignore

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-nonprofit-pharma/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-nonprofit-pharma` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Build a drug company that does not need profits, modelled on the ones that developed new tuberculosis and sleeping-sickness drugs, to take on rare, paediatric and undruggable cancers.

## Summary

A product development partnership (PDP) for oncology, on the model of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, TB Alliance and Medicines for Malaria Venture: philanthropic and public core funding, in-licensing of shelved or academic assets, virtual development through contract organisations, trials run with academic networks, and pricing at cost plus a margin reinvested in the pipeline. Target areas are those where the commercial case is weak but the science is ready: paediatric solid tumours, rare fusion-driven cancers, repurposed generics, and de-escalation regimens. The PDP can also be the licensee of last resort for assets that companies abandon.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: An oncology PDP funded at $100 to $200 million a year brings at least three products to registration within a decade in indications with no commercial programme, at development costs under a third of industry averages.
- Rationale: DNDi has delivered multiple approved treatments (fexinidazole for sleeping sickness among them) and TB Alliance delivered pretomanid, at a fraction of industry costs, by combining donor funding with in-licensing and academic trial networks. Oncology has large philanthropic flows but no comparable development vehicle.
- Proposed test: Seed a PDP with two in-licensed assets and one repurposing programme; success at year five is one asset in a registration trial and a documented cost per phase.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: philanthropy

## Sources

- Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative: https://dndi.org/
- TB Alliance: https://www.tballiance.org/

## Connected records

- ideas: [A public registry of stalled academic assets and shelved company compounds](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-stalled-asset-registry/), [A repurposing label pathway with short exclusivity that non-profits can hold](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-repurposing-indication-exclusivity/), [Advance market commitments for paediatric and rare cancer drugs](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-amc-paediatric-rare/), [Automatic offer of shelved cancer assets to non-profits after two years](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-shelved-asset-escrow/), [Milestone-based venture philanthropy with royalties recycled into the pipeline](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-milestone-venture-philanthropy/), [Patent-free open-source development of repurposed and off-patent cancer drugs](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-open-source-repurposing-leads/), [Scale up public drug development that takes academic assets to phase 1](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-national-drug-development-office/)
- cancers: [Biliary tract cancer (cholangiocarcinoma)](https://onco.cc/cancers/cholangiocarcinoma/), [Neuroblastoma (paediatric)](https://onco.cc/cancers/neuroblastoma/), [Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST)](https://onco.cc/cancers/sarcoma/)
- bottlenecks: [Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-incentive-misalignment/), [Rare and paediatric cancers without markets](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-rare-cancers/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)

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