Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD)

Novartis established the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) in Singapore in 2003. The NITD works with local and international researchers - as well as Novartis research centers - to develop medicines to combat rapidly spreading conditions such as dengue fever, malaria and tuberculosis.

Our investment in the field of tropical disease research is an exception in an industry that has traditionally neglected illnesses that are endemic within the developing world.

The NITD is the first institute of its kind to focus solely on drug discovery for infectious disease, using modern pharmaceutical research tools including high-throughput screens, and crystallography/NMR studies. It also houses a state-of-the-art biosafety level 3 lab.

Medicines discovered by the institute will be made available without profit to poor patients in those countries where they are most needed. We are planning to produce a robust pipeline of drug candidates in the area of dengue fever, tuberculosis and malaria, and have at least two drug candidates with proof-of-concept in patients by 2012.

A top NITD goal is to become a center of knowledge and education and, by teaching and training post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, help people in the developing world learn how to continue to address these problems in their own countries.

The NITD is one of four Corporate Research institutes at Novartis. The other three Corporate Research institutes are the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) in Basel, Switzerland, the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in La Jolla, California, and the Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health (NVGH) in Siena, Italy.

 

Learn more on the Novartis Institutes:

The Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases

The Friedrich Miescher Institute

The Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation

The Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health

 

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