Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute

The Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute is a non-profit biotech organization dedicated to accelerating the product development timeline for diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest populations, starting with malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrheal diseases—diseases that combined cause five deaths every minute.* Headquartered in Boston, Mass. and led by CEO Dr. Penny Heaton, our focus is translational medicine, advancing novel drug and vaccine candidates against the aforementioned diseases from the laboratory into human studies. At the Gates MRI, we work across multiple interventions and disease areas to increase the identification, selection, and optimization of novel drug and vaccine candidates, with the intention to transition viable candidates to late-stage development partners across the global health ecosystem. We will seek to publish our learnings, so that they will be available to all research and development communities through our commitment to open access. Gates MRI will use quantitative sciences—including predictive modeling and modern statistical methods—with the aim of developing strong biomarker strategies upfront and understanding production issues early on. While these approaches are widely used in the development of products for the developed world today, the Gates MRI will be uniquely utilizing them against diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest populations. * WHO Diarrhoeal disease fact sheet, updated May 2017; WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2017; WHO Malaria Policy and Advisory Committee Meeting Report 2018