Earlier this year, Beijing’s Global Health Drug Discovery Institute officially opened its doors. The GHDDI is a non-profit, independent drug R&D institute founded by three entities: the Gates Foundation, the Beijing municipal government and Tsinghua University. It is backed by $100 million, which will support the institute for its first five years. The GHDDI will follow the Gates Foundation’s interest in developing effective, inexpensive drugs for diseases prevalent in low-resource areas of the world, while it also assembles a screening library of molecules that have the potential for repurposing to other diseases.
