Every minute, five people die from tuberculosis, malaria or diarrhoeal diseases. The Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates MRI), a newly launched non-profit biotech that is backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, now hopes to lower this toll. Gates MRI CEO Penny Heaton — formerly a vaccine developer at Novartis, Novavax and Merck & Co. — is excited about deploying US$100 million per year towards advancing much-needed drugs and vaccines for these diseases through to phase II proof-of-concept trials. She spoke with Asher Mullard about the biotech's place in the global health R&D ecosystem, the opportunity for a quick win with a tuberculosis vaccine and priorities for antimalarial and enteric disease research.
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Penny Heaton. Nat Rev Drug Discov 17, 614–615 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2018.151
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2018.151
