Gates Foundation’s Tachi Yamada: Biotechies and VCs are Missing Out on Global Health
Date:
Friday, July 30, 2010 By Luke Timmerman
Tachi Yamada was a big name in Big Pharma before he took the top global health job at the world’s richest charitable organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But no single organization—not even a multi-national, multi-billion dollar R&D shop at GlaxoSmithKline, or the Gates Foundation—can conquer leading killers like HIV, tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, and malaria by itself.
The need for productive partnerships came up over and over again yesterday at an event yesterday at PATH, the nonprofit global health hothouse based in Seattle. This event brought together Yamada, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, Helene Gayle of CARE USA, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a high official in the U.S. State Department, and others. Most of the talk was about forming partnerships between the U.S. and other nations, between the state and federal governments, and between nonprofits like PATH, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the University of Washington, etc.
A number of speakers emphasized the humanitarian need to stay committed to fighting scourges of the developing world, even when state and federal budgets are tight. Yet little was said about how all the nonprofits and governments are supposed to work with Big Pharma companies like Yamada’s former employer, or for-profit venture-backed biotech companies whose job it is to turn basic research into actual vaccines, drugs, diagnostics—and get them implemented in a big way.
So I followed up with Yamada for a few minutes afterward to ask him about what Big Pharma, biotech entrepreneurs, and venture capital can do to get more involved. Here’s what he had to say.
Source:
Xconomy.com 
