Research foundations announce $300M health partnership

The three largest research foundations in the world have announced a new partnership to support research and development into major global health challenges that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest communities.

The Danish Novo Nordisk Foundation, UK charity Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation will each commit $100 million to the three-year initiative, announced at Novo Nordisk Foundation’s global science summit in Denmark on Monday.

Initial projects will seek to address the health impacts of climate change, infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, and to understand the link between nutrition, immunity, disease, and development outcomes.

“The market alone doesn’t bring dollars to work on the health of the poorest, whether it’s malnutrition, malaria, or inexpensive gene therapy,” said Bill Gates, co-founder of the Gates Foundation.

The three foundations all have long-standing collaborations, but this is the first major joint announcement. “I hope it won’t be our last,” Gates said.

Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, said the organisations will pool their expertise to build complementarity and scale. A multidisciplinary approach is required to address the challenges of health inequity and climate change, he said.

“Not one single technology can solve either of these huge problems,” Thomsen said. “We have to see it as an ecosystem that starts with early science – some of what we’ll be doing is pure science – that then, as we progress the partnership, we will find partners with whom we can scale up these solutions.”

The role of philanthropy is to address areas where there are market and government failures, but the partners are also looking to reach out and build connections, said Wellcome CEO John-Arne Røttingen.

“I hope we can inspire others to come into this space,” he said. “We need more philanthropic investments, but we also want to crowd in governments to partner with us and work in partnership with the private sector, because they have an important role to play in finding solutions and sustainable business models.”

The funding will include support for researchers and institutions in low- and middle-income countries. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the Nairobi-based African Population and Health Research Centre said she expects the partnership to be “catalytic” in developing a new generation of local experts who understand the region and can be “long-term partners to decision makers.”

Resilient food systems

The first area for collaboration will combine climate, health, and agricultural science to further understanding of climate change and build resilient food systems. More than half of infectious diseases are aggravated by climate change, according to a recent study.

Projects on infectious diseases will focus on addressing antimicrobial resistance, advancing disease surveillance and developing vaccines for respiratory infections.

The third priority, nutrition, will include research into the effects of over- and under-nutrition on health and development, including the risk and severity of cardiometabolic and infectious diseases.

Global child mortality rates were halved between 1990 and 2013, as part of a push under the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Gates said scientific advances, including better understanding malnutrition and “what’s going on with children in poor countries that means that they never develop physically and mentally,” will be key to achieving further progress.

In a joint statement, the three organisations said funding for global health and development has been dwindling after a boost during the COVID-19 pandemic, as governments around the world make cuts amid a tough financial climate.

The Gates foundation was created in 2000 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda, with a mandate to improve health care across the globe, and last year awarded $7.7 billion in research grants.

The Wellcome Trust, established in 1936 following the death of American pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, made £1.2 billion in grant awards last year.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation, which owns controlling shares in Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, awarded $901.5 million in grants in 2023. A Science|Business analysis shows that the three foundations have very different methods when it comes to distributing funds.

The EU also invests in global health research, mainly through the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), first launched in 2003. The current iteration, EDCTP3, has a total budget of €1.6 billion, and researchers and MEPs have called for the partnership to have a prominent place in the next framework programme for research and innovation.

Strengthening cooperation with civil society groups, including philanthropic organisations, is one of the guiding principles of the EU’s global health strategy.