Bill Gates authorize $100m for fund to fight Alzheimer’s
Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is to invest US$50 million (1.65 billion baht) in the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), a venture capital fund that brings together industry and government to seek treatments for the brain-wasting disease.
The investment is not part of Gates’ philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will be followed with another $50 million in a number of start-up ventures working in Alzheimer’s research, Gates said. With rapidly rising numbers of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, the disease is taking a growing emotional and financial toll as people live longer, Gates told Reuters in an interview. the additional $50 million would be put into start-ups working on some “less mainstream” approaches to the disease, but said he had not yet identified these companies.Alongside the $50 million investment in DDF and the additional $50 million planned for start-ups, Gates said he would like to award a grant to build a global dementia data platform. This would make it easier for researchers to look for patterns and identify new pathways for treatment, he said. Source: Bangkok Post
