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Feb 18, 2009
Elias Zerhouni, who headed up the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the Bush administration, is back at work for another powerful person: Bill Gates.
Zerhouni, 57, joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Microsoft founder's public health and education philanthropy, earlier this month as a senior fellow. Zerhouni will act as an adviser on the foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, which hands out grants to solve public health problems that aren’t otherwise being addressed by science, such as creating single-dose vaccines and vaccines that don’t need to be refrigerated. The Lancet Global Health Network noted Zerhouni's new role yesterday.
Dec 8, 2008
An experimental malaria vaccine for babies reduced the chances of developing the mosquito-borne illness by more than half, scientists are reporting today. The results, from two trials conducted in Kenya and Tanzania, are the most promising yet in the quest to develop effective immunization against the life-threatening parasite.
The findings on GlaxoSmithKline's RTS,S/AS01 showed a 53 percent lower risk of infection over eight months and were presented today at the annual American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in New Orleans. They build on results published last year that found that GSK's RTS,S/AS02 vaccine (the same shot formulated with a different adjuvant, or immune-enhancing additive) slashed the risk of a first-time malaria infection by 66 percent in infants who received the full three-dose course. A safety study on that vaccine published in today's online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine showed about the same efficacy — a 65 percent reduction in first-time infections for babies 12 months and younger.
Oct 23, 2008 | 3
So much for retirement. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is reportedly creating a new company to coordinate business for the software giant and his philanthropic Gates Foundation.
The mysteriously dubbed bgC3 LLC, first reported yesterday by the blog TechFlash, will apparently be a think tank for science and tech innovations. The "C" in the name stands for "catalyst," not "company," an unidentified source told TechFlash.
Gates, who stepped down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft in June, has a high-tech shop outside Seattle for bgC3, outfitted with his company's Surface touch-table computer. But TechFlash speculates bgC3 won't be a new, giant enterprise: A letter a Gates rep wrote to a city official in Kirkland, Wash., where the office is housed, said occupancy would be limited to 40 to 60 people — far fewer than the thousands of worker bees on the sprawling Microsoft campus in nearby Redmond.
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