In other news, Eli Lilly and The Mind Trust , a nonprofit group supporting educational reform, launched The Mind Trust’s Grow What Works campaign. The campaign seeks to raise and invest $18 million in educational organizations in Indianapolis, Indiana. Lilly is investing $2.5 million in the campaign, the company’s largest-ever education-focused grant.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) reported further progress on its commitment to reinvest 20% of its profits made in least-developed countries back into healthcare infrastructure in those countries.GSK has formed a new partnership with three nongovernmental organizations: AMREF in east and southern Africa, CARE International UK in Asia Pacific, and Save the Children in West Africa. The shared objectives of these investments will be to improve health outcomes in supporting frontline workers who operate in those regions.

Sanofi and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), a nonprofit product-development partnership, formed a three-year research collaboration agreement for the research of new treatments for nine neglected tropical diseases listed by the World Health Organization. The diseases are kinetoplastid diseases (i.e., leishmaniases, Chagas disease, and human African trypanosomiasis), helminth infections (i.e.,lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis,, and soil-transmitted helminthiasis), and dracunculiasis, fascioliasis, and schistosomiasis. Under the agreement, Sanofi will initially bring molecules from its libraries into the partnership, and DNDi will collaborate in research activities on innovative molecular scaffolds.

In other news, Sanofi and the Medicines for Malaria Venture, a nonprofit public–private partnership, have signed an alliance agreement to research malaria treatments and agreed to the first research project agreement within the framework of the alliance. As part of an agreement, signed earlier this year, both parties will work together to identify, characterize, and optimize new candidate compounds to treat malaria and conduct early-development programs to demonstrate proof of concept. The three-year research project, “Orthology Malaria,” seeks to develop drug candidates from a sent of Sanofi compounds that have been selected for their potential activity against malaria parasites.

Sanofi also joined China’s Ministry of Health, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Chinese Diabetes Society of the Chinese Medical Association to launch an integrated diabetes-management program, China Initiative for Diabetes Excellence. The five-year initiative seeks to deliver a patient-centric model of diabetes management at the community and county level. The program will consist of developing 500 emerging experts in four successive groups through a two-year longitudinal clinical and research-training program taught by facility from CDS and the International Diabetes Center, a World Health Organization collaboration center for diabetes training. Additionally, the program will train 10,000 community and county doctors to improve patient education in diabetes, particularly for high-risk populations.