Gates funds cheap antimalaria drug research for poor nations
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 @ 3:30 PM PST by
A $42.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will create a powerful new approach to developing a more affordable, accessible cure for malaria, which kills more than a million children each year. UC Berkeley will conduct research to perfect a microbial factory for the compound artemisinin, currently the most effective treatment for malaria, and Amyris, a new biotech company founded on the breakthroughs in synthetic biology pioneered at UC Berkeley, will develop the process for industrial fermentation and commercialization.