The Delaware-based biopharmaceutical company NIIMBL is getting a boost from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
$1.5 million will go towards the company’s efforts to develop technologies that manufacture biopharmaceuticals more efficiently and at less of a cost for distribution around the world.
The biological medicines are used to treat and prevent many of the most debilitating diseases.
NIIMBL’s Director Kelvin Lee says his group’s work is aligned with the foundation’s global health mission.
“They obviously have a strong interest in trying to see technologies advance that will help substantially reduce the cost of making medicines—in particular, it could be vaccines, it could be therapeutic proteins and so on—to support the needs of the developing world,” said Lee.
Teams of NIIMBL members will be able to propose innovative ideas and access funds from the foundation’s grant through a one-to-one match from all of the project’s partners.
“That money can go towards paying for staff or students to do the work, it can go towards acquiring a novel piece of equipment, it can go towards experimental costs and so on,” said Lee.
NIIMBL’s new headquarters at the University of Delaware STAR campus is slated to open next year. Lee says the laboratories in that facility will house many of NIIMBL’s projects.
