Drugs from nature help millions, but some say there’s a catch

CALI, Colombia – A flower from Madagascar held a secret to halting cancer. A sea sponge in the Caribbean was responsible for the first antiretroviral treatment for HIV. The venom of a lizard found in Mexico and the United States inspired the blockbuster drug Ozempic for weight loss and diabetes.

For decades, drugmakers and researchers have found lifesaving medical advances in dozens of plants, animals and other organisms. But the countries harboring the richest biodiversity on Earth – in Latin America, Africa and Asia – often don’t profit from the creation of treatments and other innovations inspired by nature.

On Saturday morning, negotiators from nearly 200 nations at a U.N. biodiversity summit in Colombia agreed to launch a new pot of money, called the Cali Fund, to give back to nations when companies make money using online databases of biological data.

In recent years, these digital Noah’s arks have made it easier for scientists to scour genetic information from creatures around the world to unlock new drugs and other products.

The decision is a small step toward solving an extinction crisis that threatens ecosystems and the people who depend on them, with hundreds of thousands of species at risk of vanishing. The hope is that the new stream of money will help countries boost conservation efforts.

But nations have a long history of failing to make good on financial pledges like this. It’s unclear to what extent companies will be compelled to pay under the deal.

The cost of saving nature is high: about $700 billion a year, according to one estimate. Money from pharmaceuticals and other companies making billions from nature can go part of the way to closing that gap.

Such a system could “create this balancing act in which countries are motivated to protect and conserve their biodiversity,” said Amber Hartman Scholz, a microbiologist at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ in Germany.

Natural products

Evolution has created a wealth of compounds beneficial to human health. Indigenous groups and other practitioners of traditional medicine have known this for generations.

For decades, foreign corporations have turned to traditional medicine to search for new drugs and create businesses that generate millions – sometimes billions – of dollars, often without sharing benefits back. For instance, a flower from Madagascar called a periwinkle, long used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine, contains compounds scientists have marshaled to create treatments for cancer. Some advocates have dubbed the practice “biopiracy.”

And it’s not just drugs. A heat-loving bacterium from Yellowstone’s hot springs underpinned PCR tests for COVID. Cosmetics, food supplements, even the fashion industry find solutions in nature. Enzymes from a lake in Kenya, for example, are responsible for the look of stonewashed jeans.

In 2010, nations sought to rectify this by setting up rules to ensure countries have legal rights to physical plants and animals within their borders.

But the current system is clunky and onerous, some scientists say, requiring researchers to work with regulators country by country. There’s “a lot of frustration, a lot of antagonism back and forth between countries about why that didn’t work,” Scholz said.

Increasingly, scientists don’t need to travel for physical specimens.

The advent of the internet and the plunging cost of sequencing genes means scientists can look for cures simply by searching through widely available genetic databases that are outside existing U.N. rules. Recently, researchers have turned to artificial intelligence to comb these massive and databases, which are often free to use for the good of science.

Two years ago, nations agreed to try to set up a multilateral fund to compensate countries safeguarding plants and animals with genes that lead to products. “It took a lot of political arm twisting and diplomatic maneuvering to achieve that,” said Pierre du Plessis, a former negotiator for African countries.

But there were seemingly hundreds of issues to hammer out: Which sort of companies and other institutions should pay? How much? And to which countries should that money go? What would that money be used for, and who within each country would get it?

‘Why don’t you contribute?’

In Cali, nations agreed to ask companies in pharmaceuticals, biotech, cosmetics and other sectors that benefit from genetic resources to contribute 1% of their profits or 0.1% of their revenue to the fund. At least half that money is meant to go toward Indigenous groups and other local communities.

But there are few, if any, mechanisms for enforcement under the agreement, meaning nations have to trust one another to make good on the promise to persuade companies to pay.

Ossama AbdelKawy, a delegate from Egypt who represents African nations on the issue in Cali, said companies using these genetic databases should be required to pay.

“We don’t want the system to be used as a tool to enhance biopiracy,” he said. “If you’re generating money from that, why don’t you contribute?”

But the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations has pushed back against requiring countries to impose anything resembling a tax on their industry.

“These proposals could undermine the objectives they aim to support by introducing regulatory and financial barriers that would stifle innovation,” the trade group said in a statement ahead of negotiations.

Ahead of the decision, Marc de Bruyn, a spokesman for the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer, said it was “open to getting involved.”

But he added, “We are convinced that the right way forward would be a voluntary contribution from industry as well as completely new public-private partnerships.”

Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker behind Ozempic, did not reply to a request for comment.

Daphne Yong-d’Hervé, a director at the International Chamber of Commerce, which represents a range of sectors including pharmaceuticals, said “businesses are willing to pay.” But, she added, “if it becomes too complicated or too expensive, then it is no longer commercially viable.”

One complicating factor: the United States. It and Vatican City are the only two nations not party to the treaty underpinning the talks in Cali, called the Convention on Biological Diversity. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton signed the pact, but Republicans in Congress squashed its ratification.

Yet the United States is part of a major global collaboration of government and nonprofit organizations that house free-to-use DNA databases. What will it mean for the fund if such an important country for genetic sequencing isn’t a party of the agreement?

“I keep asking them that question, and I don’t have a satisfactory answer to it,” du Plessis said.

Another big issue that remains unresolved: What counts as genetic information? Is it just DNA? What about RNA? Does it include information such as protein structure, which can tell you why a gene is important? Since this technology is evolving quickly, it’s still unclear what kind of data will prove useful in the future.

“Bizarrely enough, lawyers are very insistent that we don’t define it too strictly,” said Marcel Jaspars, a professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. “When you have a strict definition, all of a sudden you have loopholes.”

The issue of who should profit from lifesaving medicines found in wildlife matters not just for people, but for the environment, too.

“We know that nature is deteriorating and we need to raise money for that,” AbdelKawy said. “If we destroy it, everybody will suffer.”

- – -

This article is part of Animalia, a column exploring the strange and fascinating world of animals and the ways in which we appreciate, imperil and depend on them.