The Wellcome Trust has teamed up with pharmaceutical giant

Finance | 24 Sep 2009

Merck to create a joint-venture vaccine research organisation, in the first known pharma-charity partnership.
The new Hilleman Laboratories has been guaranteed £90m in equal parts from the Wellcome Trust and Merck over a five-year period.

The venture will be based in India, but will work to develop cheap vaccines for low-income countries around the world. It is due to open its first facility in 2010.
While Hilleman will be a non-profit organisation, it is designed to become a self-sustaining venture, with national governments the prime target for revenue.

Director of the Wellcome Trust Sir Mark Walport said the laboratories would be open to receiving funding from other charitable organisations, academia and pharmaceutical organisations. Organisations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were aware of the creation of Hilleman Laboratories, he said, but no extra funding or research collaboration agreements have yet been made.

Richard Clark, chief executive of Merck, dismissed concerns that vaccines developed by Hilleman Laboratories could undercut or compete with the company’s own, profit-making products and that rival pharmaceutical companies would be adverse to contributing funding or intellectual resources to the enterprise. Clark said that Merck would welcome both rival vaccines and rival companies’ involvement in Hilleman.
Three representatives from both Merck and the Wellcome Trust sit on the board of Hilleman.

Directory: Wellcome Trust
Who's Who: Sir Mark Walport

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