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 will also house 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 have at least two compounds in clinical trials by 2008, and one novel compound available to 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 three Corporate Research institutes at Novartis. The other two Corporate Research institutes are the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) in Basel, Switzerland, and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in La Jolla, California.