The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s newest addition to its biotech ambitions had its first public appearance during the 2018 BIO International Convention in Boston, PMLiVE reports.
The Gates Medical Research Institute non-profit has been in planning for more than a year, and has its crosshairs on developing treatments for malaria, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases.
According to PMLiVE, the BIO meeting was one the opportunities for the institute to put forward its vision of focusing heavily on privately underfunded diseases to a large audience.
Gates MRI’s leader, Dr. Penny Heaton, said during the event that malaria, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases have seen little improvements, and still cause a significant number of avoidable deaths each year.
“Think of [Gates MRI] as a non-profit biotech that is focused on the diseases of the poorest,” she said. “We believe that those diseases – that disproportionately affect the poort – deserve the same attention, cutting edge technology … and sophisticated approaches that the diseases of the rich do.”
Click here to read the full report on PMLiVE.
