Gates Foundation Backs Off ‘Grand Challenges’ Health Effort

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is scaling back an ambitious plan to finance long-term, speculative medical research and centering its health efforts on quickly developing low-cost vaccines, according to The Seattle Times.

The foundation has spent $460-million on 45 projects as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health program, which attracted proposals from eminent teams of scientists to pursue breakthrough solutions to persistent health challenges. Most of the projects have used up their initial grants and will not receive more money.

Tachi Yamada, the foundation’s global health chief, said the organization is sharpening its focus on work with potential near-term applications and has made development and distribution of vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases its top priority.

“In the very earliest days, honestly I don’t know if we knew what we were doing. We were giving away money as fast as we could,” Dr. Yamada said. “Now we’re trying to be more strategic.”