By Kate Kelland, Correspondent of Health and Science
LONDON (Reuters) - Bill Gates, co-founder of Billionaire Microsoft, will invest $ 50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that brings together industry and government to find cures for brain disease .
The investment - a personal investment that is not part of the Gates Bill & Melinda Gates Philanthropic Foundation - will be followed by another $ 50 million start-up working in the research on the G & A. Alzheimer's, said Gates.
With the rapid increase in the number of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, the disease takes on an increasing emotional and financial weight as people live longer, Gates told Reuters in an interview.
"It's a huge problem, a growing problem, and the scale of the tragedy - even for people who stay alive - is very high," he said.
Despite decades of scientific research, no treatment can slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Current medications can only relieve some symptoms.
Gates, however, said that with a targeted and well-funded innovation, his "optimistic" treatments can be found, even if they could be in more than a decade.
"It will probably take 10 years before new theories are tried out enough times to give them a great chance of success, so it is very hard to guess (when an effective drug could be developed)
"I hope that in the next 10 years we will have powerful drugs, but it is possible that this is not possible."
Dementia, whose most common form is Alzheimer's disease, affects nearly 50 million people worldwide and is expected to affect more than 131 million by 2050, according to Alzheimer's Disease International. , a non-profit group.
The DDF, which was launched in 2015 and involves the drug manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Biogen Idec as well as the UK government, has already invested in at least nine start-ups that are studying ways to stop or reverse the biological processes that lead to dementia.
Gates told Reuters that an additional $ 50 million would be invested in start-ups working on "less conventional" approaches to the disease, but added that he had not yet identified these companies.
The philanthropist, who usually focuses on infectious diseases in the poorest countries, said that Alzheimer's disease had aroused her interest partly for personal reasons and partly because she it's proved so difficult to solve.
"I know how awful it is to see people you love fighting because illness deprives them of their mental capacity ... It's like you have a progressive death of the person you knew ", he said. in an article on investments in dementia
"Some of the men in my family have suffered from Alzheimer's disease, but I would not say it's the only reason" (for this investment), "he added.
Jeremy Hughes, CEO of the Alzheimer Society, praised Gates' "significant personal investment," saying it would accelerate progress toward healing and help reduce the stigma surrounding dementia: "Bill Gates is now joined to all who are already united against dementia, there is new hope for progress in the care and healing of dementia, "he said in a statement .
In discussing with experts in the field over the past year, Gates has identified five areas of need: better understanding how Alzheimer's disease unfolds, detecting and diagnosing it earlier, looking for multiple ways to stop the disease so that people take part in clinical trials of potential new drugs, and make better use of the data.
"My background at Microsoft and in the context of my foundation (Gates) tells me that a data-driven contribution could be an area where I can help add value," he said. says
.In addition to the $ 50 million investment in DDF and the additional $ 50 million earmarked for start-ups, Gates said he would like to grant a grant to build a global data platform on Madness. This would make it easier for researchers to search for patterns and identify new treatment pathways, he said.
(Edited by Dan Grebler and Andrew Heavens)
[ad_2]
Source link