DuPont Receives Grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

On Dec. 15, 2016, DuPont Industrial Biosciences announced the receipt of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support a research project aimed at creating new production systems to enable affordable, protein-based biologic medications. Through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, DuPont will apply its capabilities in the areas of protein engineering, pathway engineering, and cell factories to the field of protein drugs. When applied to pharmaceutical protein production, this approach has the potential to enable rapid scale-up and lower costs at high volumes, making protein drugs such as monoclonal antibodies potentially suitable for infectious diseases, effectively managing outbreaks and providing affordable supply to people around the world.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in drug discovery research through a variety of mechanisms. In a time when public-funded research is diminishing, companies such as DuPont are engaging in new ways with stakeholders across the public and private sectors to tackle large societal challenges, Dupont said in a press release.