Gates Foundation Plans To Invest In Biotech Companies To Improve Global…

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “plans to take equity stakes in up to a dozen biotech companies this year, signaling a shift towards a ‘venture capital’ approach at the world’s biggest philanthropic organization” and “mark[ing] a further move away from its traditional approach of grant-giving and towards a more business-oriented way to support the development of treatments and vaccines for infectious diseases affecting the world’s poor,” the Financial Times reports. Trevor Mundel, president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, said the foundation will make a series of investments worth several million dollars each “and not ask for a return but for global access. … We will specify the countries and the diseases,” according to the newspaper. The Financial Times notes that “[t]he move points to growing interest in working directly with companies rather than primarily through co-operating via non-profit ‘product development partnerships’ or intermediaries such as the Medicines for Malaria Venture and the Tuberculosis Alliance” (Jack, 6/26).

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Gates Foundation Plans To Invest In Biotech Companies To Improve Global…

Posted by Kaiser GH Update on Jun 29 2012. Filed under Aid, Infectious Disease, Kaiser's Global Health Update, Malaria, Tuberculosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry