SCRIPPS - Gets Additional $50M

"Gates Foundation gives $50M to Scripps" by Gary Robbins, San Diego Union-Tribune 1/29/2020

NOTE:  Article copied from e-newspaper therefore no link to article.

Money intended to fight tuberculosis, malaria as well as other threats to global health

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving Scripps Research $50 million to fight two of the world’s biggest killers — tuberculosis and malaria — and to help the La Jolla institute gear up for other global health threats, such as China’s deadly coronavirus.

The money will be shared with Scripps’ drug development division, Calibr, which has had success in creating therapies for malaria and HIV, both which have ravaged parts of Africa and southeast Asia.

Calibr researchers also are working on an injectable anti-malarial drug that’s meant to prevent people from contracting a disease that kills roughly 1 million people a year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.  By comparison, tuberculosis annually kills 1.5 million, which is roughly the population of San Diego.

The foundation — which has a heavy focus on global health — began investing in Calibr in 2014, giving the institute $30 million to speed up drug development.

Calibr later merged with Scripps Research, which conducts basic research, work that is essential to identifying new drug candidates.

The new gift raises the Gates Foundation’s total support to Calibr and Scripps to $135 million, making the foundation — created by Microsoft’s co-founder and his wife, a former general manager at the software giant — one of the largest private supporters of life science research in San Diego over the past six years.

“Our basic science and drug development gives us the capabilities of a pharmaceutical company,” said Arnab Chatterjee, Calibr’s vice president for medicinal chemistry.

“We can test drugs in patients.  That helps us get a jump on diseases that are happening across the globe, but which can show up on your doorstep in weeks.”

That’s exactly what has happened with the Chinese coronavirus.  It began infecting people in central China in mid-December and soon spread to at least 13 other countries, including the U.S.

Individual cases have been reported in Orange and Los Angeles counties.  And San Diego County health officials are examining if a case has been confirmed in a local hospital.

Many Scripps Research scientists quickly shifted their attention to studying aspects of the coronavirus.  They included immunologist Kristian Andersen, who has taken on a central question in the outbreak: Does the coronavirus get transmitted when people have symptoms of the virus or when they don’t?

“If it occurs when people are symptomatic it would be easier to contain because you could isolate those who get it,” Andersen said.

Scripps scientists work broadly across the fields of health and medicine, studying everything from HIV, tuberculosis and cancer to Lyme disease and influenza.

In recent years, Calibr has come up with five potential drug candidates for problems as different as malaria and parasites.

Most drugs don’t make it beyond the test stage.  And those that do can be of limited effect.

“The vaccines for malaria only work 30 to 40 percent of the time, which is why we’re working on a chemical drug that could be injected,” Chatterjee said.  “We think it would be more efficient and efficacious.”

Scripps has had breakthroughs in the past.  Its scientists played a lead role in developing Surfaxin, an FDA-approved drug that’s given to premature babies with certain breathing problems.  The institute also invented Tafamadis, a medicine the FDA approved last year to treat a form of cardiomyopathy.

The key to more success involves Scripps’ growing relationship with the Gates Foundation, said Matt Tremblay, Scripps’ chief operating officer.

“The foundation has people spread all over the world, where they really see what the problems are,” Tremblay said.

“They share that with our basic scientists, and with our drug developers, who will have different perspectives.  This is a model that works.”

PAY IT FORWARD - Zuckerberg and Chan, the Ripples

"How Zuckerberg and Chan just changed big charitable giving" PBS NewsHour 12/2/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Following the birth of their daughter Max, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have announced they will donate 99 percent of their wealth to charity.  The money will be managed by a limited liability corporation called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and will focus on health and education.  Gwen Ifill discusses the move with Stacy Palmer of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  It’s a very different kind of baby gift.  Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced yesterday the birth of his daughter with a most unusual letter.

He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will donate 99 percent of their shares in the social media giant, an estimated $45 billion as of today, to charity.  The couple created the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability corporation, on personalized learning, curing diseases, and building strong communities.

They released a short video on Facebook explaining their decision.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, Founder, Facebook:  Having this child has made us think about all the things that should be improved in the world for her whole generation.  The only way that we reach our full human potential is if we’re able to unlock the gift of every person around the world.

PRISCILLA CHAN, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative:  We want to make sure we invest in programs that ensure that the future isn’t going to be like today; the future is going to be better than today.

GWEN IFILL:  We get more insight into this decision and the larger context from Stacy Palmer, editor of “The Chronicle of Philanthropy.”

Welcome.

STACY PALMER, The Chronicle of Philanthropy:  Happy to join you.

GWEN IFILL:  Explain to us what the difference is between — you noticed I mentioned that it was a limited liability corporation — between that and a normal nonprofit that we have heard — we have heard of people with money creating foundations before, but this seemed different.

STACY PALMER:  This is quite different.  This isn’t like the Gates Foundation.

And I think that Mark Zuckerberg is saying that philanthropy, the way it works now isn’t working so well and we need a different kind of model.

So, this limited liability corporation, we don’t know a lot of details about how it will work, but what is different is, it doesn’t have the same kinds of limits on lobbying that foundations have right now.  It can do more investing.  It doesn’t have to disclose as much information as a foundation does.  It doesn’t face the requirement that you give at least 5 percent of grants each year.

So there are some good things in terms of the flexibility it gives to the donor.  There are some concerns as well though about the public interest, and I think we’re going to hear a lot more about that in the coming days.

GWEN IFILL:  So, how big a player has Silicon Valley now become in philanthropy overall?  We keep hearing about this.  And we know that almost every name we recognize in that area of the country in the tech world seems to have their own foundation.

STACY PALMER:  It’s huge.  It’s amazing.

Among the biggest philanthropists now, the tech industry is more dominant than the financial industry, which we never saw in the world of philanthropy.  So, clearly, lots and lots of people in tech are giving.  And I think will be an important symbol for those who haven’t given or are thinking about giving bigger, that they want to follow in the steps that Mark and Priscilla have set.

EDUCATION - Debate on Common Core Standards

As I have said before, the ONLY problem with Common Core Standards is the TEST, which when used to tie school funding to the results, which in turn forces some schools to spend time teaching to the test to get money.  The results should ONLY be use as a benchmark to see how each school is doing compared to others.

"Bill and Melinda Gates on the political debate over Common Core standards" PBS NewsHour 10/7/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Bill and Melinda Gates, two of the world’s leading philanthropists, sit down with Gwen Ifill in Seattle to discuss their efforts to support education reform and the political battles over the Common Core standards.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  They have spent $35 billion so far tackling malaria and AIDS and Ebola abroad.

But here at home, their laser focus has been on education reform, which has catapulted them into the middle of a 2016 political debate.

I sat down today in Seattle with Bill and Melinda Gates.

Melinda, Bill Gates, thank you for joining us.

MELINDA GATES, Gates Foundation:  Thanks for having us.

GWEN IFILL:  For better or worse this year, education is a campaign issue.  You can say that is good news, that’s bad news.  How do you see it, Melinda?

MELINDA GATES:  I think the fact that education is part of the public discourse in an election year is incredibly important, because education for us in America is the bridge to equal opportunity.

And so, if it’s not working for everybody, we need to be discussing that as a nation.  So, in that sense, it’s actually a good thing.

GWEN IFILL:  But the discussion is all about Common Core and about whether standardized testing, and however you choose to define Common Core, is the right idea.

Do you worry that the whole issue that you have pushed to support, this idea of raising achievement through standardized testing and other ways, do you worry that politics is obscuring Common Core arguments?

BILL GATES, Gates Foundation:  Well, it is concerning that the facts about Common Core are often obscured.

The Common Core sets high standards for what math, reading and writing kids should learn in high school, and it helps get the progression down, so that even if a kid is moving from state to state, if they’re using online material, it’s all benchmarked the same way.  And if a kid graduates from high school, they will know that they don’t have to go and take remedial classes.

So, it’s a very important advance.  It’s a standard that is allowing for a lot of innovation, where people build elements that connect up to the Common Core.  So, we’re seeing great results.  Kentucky was the first state to go ahead with it.  They’re actually the state that’s seen the most improvement in a lot of their test scores, and even in their high school graduation rates.

So, it’s rolling out.  It’s a foundational piece that will help improve things.

GWEN IFILL:  How did the worm turn on this debate, from so many states adopting it so quickly, to so many people, especially Republicans, saying, if you endorse this, it’s a disqualifying feature?

MELINDA GATES:  Well, I think it’s important to look back.

It was the state governors and the state superintendents who, in 2006, said, this is right for each of our states.  This is what we want, because if these are standards are set properly, we know that our kids are on a learning trajectory to learn what they need to know to be part of the knowledge economy.

So, that’s when it was set.  There has been a lot of political debate about — and people have confounded it with, is it federal control vs. state control?  No, it’s states who are deciding this.  A few states have actually rolled back the Common Core, but it’s interesting.  What they have put in, in place of it is 95 percent the Common Core.  It just is a different word.

But 42 states and the District of Columbia are still doing the Common Core, because they know it’s right.  And more important, quite honestly, than the political debate that goes on is what’s happening with teachers in the schools.

When you survey teachers across the nation whose states have Common Core in place, they say, we like it.  It’s hard to implement, but we know it’s the right thing for our students.  Our students are learning the things that they need to learn.