Print“Funding innovation is a key to addressing the unmet health needs of the world’s poorest people, says Doug Holtzman, deputy director for the Gates Foundation’s infectious diseases team.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is making a $10 million equity investment in Liquidia Technologies to support the development of cost-effective and potent vaccines to prevent malaria and other diseases as part of the charitable group’s commitment to making this the “Decade of Vaccines.”
Increased vaccination could save more than 8 million children by 2020, according to the foundation.
“Funding innovation is a key to addressing the unmet health needs of the world’s poorest people,” says Doug Holtzman, deputy director for the Gates Foundation’s infectious diseases team. “This unique investment partnership will help us advance vaccine development as part of our commitment to help research, develop, and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.”
Liquidia’s main technology, a nano-fabrication technique, controls the shape, size, chemical composition, and other aspects of vaccine and therapeutic particles to influence their distribution in the body, bioavailability, and efficacy.
In October 2010, the company began an early-stage trial of LIQ001, its lead vaccine candidate for seasonal influenza in elderly patients. That trial, a proof-of-concept for the company’s novel nano-manufacturing technology, could eventually prove to be a successful platform for a next-generation malaria vaccine that the company is developing in partnership with the nonprofit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
The privately-held company, based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, completed a $20 million Series C financing in January 2010 led by Canaan Partners. That was followed by a $5 million investment from the Wilmington, North Carolina contract research organization, PPD.
The Gates Foundation launched its “Decade of Vaccines” campaign in January 2010, at which point it had already committed more that $4.5 billion to vaccine research, development, and delivery. Its commitment to further public-private partnerships to drive progress is likely to result in more investments in vaccine developers this year.
March 11, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-gates_foundation_pours_10_million_into_liquidia.html
.gif)
