What is your approach to portfolio management and what have been some of the key milestones?

Remco: Our portfolio approach is in some ways very practical. We focus on what the key projects are that need to be followed within certain disease areas, and where the opportunities lie. We are therefore quite opportunity driven. What I like though is that our work can be very varied. On the one hand, we may focus on malaria and follow a drug-discovery project. On the other hand, we may focus on a disease like schistosomiasis and look into the post-registration stage of a project – assessing what operational resources are necessary to move a project from regulatory approval to access and delivery of a medication like the pediatric praziquantel formulation. We can also focus on early-stage diagnostic development, building a platform for phase II or III trials, for example. We may not know all these diseases as well as the partners do who we work with, but our expertise lies in the fact that we do know how to bring the right partners together, making sure everything is in place in terms of  infrastructural, logistical and funding resources. Achieving this is always an important milestone in every project.

Kristina: Our extensive experience working in this field means that we are aware of the sensitivities. We have a good overview of what funders are out there and the complications involved in securing funding. Our role, as Lygature, is to help our stakeholders look ahead and flag what will be needed in the future, beyond a particular project term. When it comes to tangible milestones and successes, I think the Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium is a good example. Here a very old drug has been brought to our millennium, following it all the way from development to access and delivery. In the case of the MMV-PDP collaboration, we were very happy to have a pre-clinical candidate declared last year. The project is now doing preparatory studies to make sure it’s safe to be tested in the first humans. This is a very exciting development.