Global Health Innovative Technology (Ghit) Fund Tenders

The Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund), headquartered in Japan, is an international public-private partnership between the Government of Japan, 16 pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and United Nations Development Programme. It funds scientific research and development for anti-infectives and diagnostics for diseases that primarily affect the developing world. Bill Gates has noted that "GHIT draws on the immense innovation capacity of Japan's pharmaceutical companies, universities and research institutions to accelerate the creation of new vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tools for global health." Margaret Chan, former Director-General of the World Health Organization, said: "The GHIT Fund has stepped in to provide that incentive in a pioneering model of partnership that brings Japanese innovation, investment and leadership to the global fight against infectious disease." The GHIT Fund is the first public-private partnership fund to involve a national government, a UN agency, a consortium of pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies, and international philanthropic foundations. The public-private partnership model, the inclusion of a whole pharmaceutical sector and the structure of individual research projects across sectors and national boundaries are all aimed at reducing the R&D risk to any one entity and to ensure that findings are open to all. Another key opportunity the GHIT Fund has created has been to help open the doors of Japan's public and private drug compound libraries to product development partnerships, which makes possible the screening of tens of thousands of drug candidates for potential new treatments. The participating companies view their investments into neglected diseases through the Fund as a long-term investment into the future, rather than charity. They see the Fund as a necessary catalyst for having allowed them to pursue this line of research. By 2022, GHIT aims to bring two of its projects to a stage where a request for regulatory approval is filed. One of the products in the pipeline and among the closest to hitting the market is a pediatric formulation of praziquantel, a drug widely used to schistosomiasis, a disease caused by parasitic flatworms.