2.  Unmet needs

2.1.  Alarming pace of deadly diseases
Death rates due to diseases largely depend on access to health care and availability of effective medicines. The vast majority of the deadliest diseases are partially preventable with better access to preventive procedures and quality healthcare delivery. With the advancements in medical sciences, we have seen a drastic reduction in death rates for many devastating diseases in developed nations and to a lesser extent in developing countries. A brief summary of the global medical challenges the humankind continues to face is presented below.

2.1.1.  Infectious diseases
Malaria is an ancient scourge as old as humanity itself. There are over 200 million new infections and around half a million deaths reported every year [5]. Despite many attempts to design effective vaccines, none has been successful at providing long-lasting benefits at a population level [9]. Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, with 10,000 million infections and 1.5 million deaths in 2018 according to the world health organization [10]. Likewise, viruses continue to compromise the lives of tens of millions of people. Globally, influenza virus infects a 1 billion people and causes up to 650,000 deaths every year despite the availability of the flu vaccine [11]. Viral infections inflect heavy societal and economic burdens beside their morbidity and mortality tolls. The past half century has witnessed deadly outbreaks of novel viruses of animal origin other than SARS-CoV2 such as Nipah, Hendra, Hanta, Ebola, several influenza subtypes, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) [12]. These outbreaks warn the urgency of understanding the factors influencing viral diseases emergence and spread as well as global preparedness to halt these epidemics from becoming a full-blown pandemic [13]. Multidrug resistance is yet another emergent global public health threat [14]. The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among bacterial pathogen are responsible for more than 700,000 deaths per year, and is projected to cause a 10 million deaths per year by 2050 [15]. The World Health Organization along with several other organization have called an urgent action to tackle the spread of antimicrobial resistance and invest in development of new antibiotics [16].

2.1.2.  Cancer
Cancer remains as the second leading cause of mortality worldwide. In 2018, cancer have affected an estimated 18.1 million people and caused 9.6 million deaths [17]. A close watch at the statistics reveals that cancer kills around 10 million people every year; which is about 20,000 people every day; that correlates to one person every second. The number of cancer deaths in the United States alone is predicted to increase to 946,833 in 2030 from 595,690 in 2016 [18]. These disturbing figures desperately calls for the need to develop early diagnostics, novel, and effective medicines as well as new drug development strategies. Partial solutions to this challenge by precision medicine and immunotherapy has been firmly established, merits to the recent inventions in cancer genomics and immunology [18].

2.1.3.  CNS diseases
Another significant growing healthcare need with a major economic and medical impacts is Dementia [19]. Globally, dementia affects around 50 million people, and over the past 18 years, the percentage of death among Alzheimer’s patients doubled while deaths resulting from stroke, and heart diseases have decreased [20]. In the US alone the number of Alzheimer’s dementia cases is expected to shoot up to 13.8 million and impose a health care burden of 1.1 trillion dollars by 2050 [20]. As of today, there are no medications known to reverse the progression of Alzheimer’s disease [21].

2.1.4.  Rare diseases
Although individual occurrence is rare, collectively rare diseases is a problem affecting 6–8% of the world population [7]. The Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network was established by The National Institutes of Health (NIH) to address these unique challenges. Among the 7,000 rare diseases, treatments are available only for 5%. Altogether across the globe, there are 350 million people diagnosed with rare diseases and half of them are children, a third of which are below 5-years old [22]. There is a great disparity in access to orphan medicinal products (OMPs) and healthcare services among world countries despite mounting international initiatives [23].