Bill Gates Nudges Drugmakers to Share Research

Major drug makers are getting a slice of all of those billions of dollars Bill Gates is spending through his foundation. And, as one recent example shows, the world's second richest man is forcing those big drug companies to share their discoveries.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was a driving force behind GlaxoSmithKline Plc's decision to share propietary drug research for fighting malaria, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports.

Glaxo recently made the data available on public Web sites so other scientists could use the information. The British company received funding from Medicines for Malaria Venture, a Swiss partnership that has received more than $315 million from the Gates Foundation since 2000.

Here's more from the Puget Sound Business Journal:

“We believe that this experimental approach into open source drug discovery is particularly appropriate to diseases of the developing world, where the commercial opportunities for recouping the costs of research and development do not exist, but the medical need is great,” said Nick Cammack, head of Glaxo’s Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus in Spain.

In his 2010 annual letter, Bill Gates identifies drug companies as critical partners in spurring new ways to fight malaria and HIV/AIDS.

“Although innovation is unpredictable, there is a lot that governments, private companies and foundations can do to accelerate it,” Gates wrote.

To read more about the Gates foundation and drug discovery, click here.