China and the US, the world’s two largest economies as well as R&D investors, are stepping up cooperation in global health security. The Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI) is one such example that leverages the respective strengths of the two countries for the benefit of the world’s poorest.

Founded in 2017, the GHDDI is a joint initiative by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Beijing Municipal Government and Tsinghua University. The GHDDI focuses on developing drugs for tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and other infectious diseases disproportionately affecting developing countries, which, according to Li Yinuo, director of the Gates Foundation’s China office, take over 90 percent of the infectious disease burden for the entire globe. Li adds that less than 20 of the roughly 1,500 new drugs launched over the last 40 years actually targeted infectious disease, given that the market is not a lucrative one.

GHDDI director Ding Sheng told CGTN that drug discovery and development takes an average 8 to 10 years and can cost up to 1 billion dollars, if taking into account all the successful and failed trials as well as opportunity cost.

To shorten that process and reduce the cost, the GHDDI combines a world-class drug discovery model replicated from the independent US non-profit, California Institute for Biomedical Research (Calibr), also a grantee of the Gates Foundation, with expertise and talent from Tsinghua University. Ding said that significant investment in biomedical research in the past decade has equipped China with both infrastructure and talent to lead such a drug discovery program. 

Beijing Science and Technology Commission under the municipal government, on the other hand, has provided both cash and facility support for the initiative.

According to Li Yinuo, the GHDDI is one of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health projects that fall under the “In China for the World” cause, which wishes to leverage China’s successful experience in combating disease and poverty as well as its vast innovative capacity to support the Foundation’s global health and development mission.