Melinda Wenner

With Big Pharma spending upward of $1 billion to bring a single drug to pharmacy shelves, its little wonder that unprofitable afflictions like malaria and African sleeping sickness go largely ignored. Curtis Chong witnessed this neglect firsthand in 2001 as a third-year medical student working in an emergency room in Mozambique. Day and night, malaria patients lined up for treatment, but Chongs medication stockpile was often too low or too antiquated to treat drug-resistant strains of the disease, and people were dying.

Six years later, the 31-year-old pharmacologist is spearheading an innovative way to bring better drugs, and more of them, to the developing world.

Looking at blood can be hard on anyone, but for some people, it can be a huge problem. Up to 30 percent of children are afraid of the sight of blood, a response that usually continues into adulthood, according to the definitive study on the topic, by Isaac Marks of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.