Bill Gates Speech at Beijing Global Health Drug Discovery Instit

在全球健康药物发现研究所的讲话

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/speeches/2023/06/bill-china-ghddi-innovation

比尔·盖茨 2023年6月15日

 

谢谢你的精彩介绍，也谢谢大家的光临。 我们的基金会致力于通过支持世界各地的尖端研发来改善人们的生活——我们与 GHDDI 的合作伙伴关系是其中的重要组成部分。

 

我特别要欢迎今天来到这里的创新者、学生和年轻研究人员。 当我想象如果你充分利用科学和技术的力量来帮助找到解决世界上最大的健康挑战的方法时你将产生的影响，我深受鼓舞。 疟疾、结核病和被忽视的热带病等疾病常常被制药公司忽视，因为它们对最贫困人口的影响尤为严重。

 

我来中国已经很久了——四年。 那时的世界看起来很不一样。 很多人对 2023 年的未来信心不如 2019 年。过去四年，世界面临着大流行病、传染病卷土重来、气候变化影响加剧，部分地区 世界，一场饥饿危机。 有意义地应对这些挑战的需求从未如此紧迫。 中国在减少贫困和改善国内健康状况方面取得了重大进展。 我希望中国能够在应对当前挑战，特别是非洲国家面临的挑战方面发挥更大作用。

 

尽管世界面临挑战，但我仍然保持乐观，原因有二：

 

首先，如果你稍稍回头想想过去的几十年，而不是几年，你会看到一个更大的模式——当世界优先考虑健康公平时出现的惊人进步模式。 我最喜欢的例子与儿童死亡率有关，因为我想不出比拯救儿童生命更重要的事情了。

 

1990 年，将近十分之一的儿童会在 5 岁之前死亡——他们大多数生活在低收入和中低收入国家，而且大多数死于可预防的传染病。 现在，仅仅一代人之后，儿童死亡率显着下降，每 25 名儿童中就有 1 人死亡。 每年有超过 750 万名儿童得救。

 

在中国，同期死亡的幼儿数量下降了惊人的 94%。 简而言之，世界已经证明，当我们设定雄心勃勃的目标并专注于实现这些目标时，我们可以取得怎样的成就。

 

我乐观的第二个原因是，科学技术解决真正难题的潜力从未如此巨大。 mRNA 疫苗技术可能使结核病和疟疾等疾病的疫苗成为可能。 为了对抗这些疾病，我们需要新的更好的预防方案。 正如我之前所说，我相信包括人工智能在内的技术进步将在医疗保健和教育领域带来快速突破，确保更多人获得救生工具并获得更多机会。 气候技术的创新——包括从更清洁的发电和储能方式到绿色钢铁和水泥的进步——将使世界减少排放成为可能，而不会限制人们获得负担得起的、丰富的清洁能源。

 

所有这些创新——以及更多创新——可以让我们有能力应对摆在我们面前的挑战。

 

世界前所未有地联系在一起。 考虑气候。 它正在发生变化，因为富裕国家的人们数百年来一直在做的事情，但到目前为止，它对低收入国家的人们造成的伤害最大——尽管他们是对这个问题贡献最少的人 . 许多这些国家目前的粮食危机是由千里之外的欧洲战争引发的。

 

所以我一直在问自己的问题是，我们如何利用科学和创新的力量来真正加快进步？

 

答案是我们可以通过确保每个人都发挥作用来做到这一点。 为了解决我们社区面临的日益复杂的挑战，并建设一个所有人都有机会过上健康和富有成效的生活的未来，我们必须汇集全球的专业知识。 这意味着应对气候变化和持续的发展需求——两者都需要创新和独创性。

 

如果没有社会各方——政府、学术界、企业和慈善机构——的参与，这些挑战是无法解决的。

 

这些部门中的每一个都非常擅长某些事情，而不擅长其他事情。 科学家们做出了巧妙的发现，但通常是企业将这些发现转化为人们实际使用的产品和服务。 有了正确的政策，政府可以确保这些解决方案惠及每个人。 慈善事业可以在市场无法推动创新的情况下推动创新，并将不同的组织聚集在一起，为共同利益服务。 当所有这些部门合作时，整体大于其部分之和。

 

中国创新者在这些全球合作伙伴关系中可以发挥重要作用。 中国在健康、农业、营养和减贫方面取得的成功可以为中国分享宝贵的经验。 它有天赋。 在全国各地的实验室、初创公司和教室里，像你们中的许多人一样的年轻人正在努力创造未来的解决方案：

 

治疗结核病和疟疾等老病的新药，用于扩大高度定制化医疗保健和教育的数字模型，可以在恶劣天气下茁壮成长的作物，如气候智能型杂交水稻品种，

提高人们生活质量但不改变气候的技术，包括输电、农业和建筑材料的新方法。在接下来的几分钟里，我想谈谈我认为世界有望取得进步的两个领域。 卫生和农业。

 

正如您在 GHDDI 非常了解的那样，我们基金会关注的一件事是一个没有疟疾的世界，疟疾仍然每分钟杀死一个孩子。 即使是该统计数据也低估了这种疾病的影响，因为它每年使大约 2.5 亿人病入膏肓。

 

绝大多数疟疾病例发生在非洲，但情况并非总是如此。 20 世纪 50 年代，中国每年至少有 3000 万例疟疾病例，超过 30 万人死于疟疾。 但随后病例和死亡人数开始稳步下降，部分原因是中国科学家取得了突破。 其中之一是屠呦呦，他的开创性工作导致了今天对疟疾的领先治疗——并获得了诺贝尔奖。 2010年，中国启动了《全国消除疟疾行动计划》。 2017年首次实现本地零感染。 并于 2021 年获得世界卫生组织无疟疾认证。

 

这是一项了不起的成就。 但中国科学家所做的不仅仅是帮助消除国内的疟疾。 他们通过开发下一代解决方案来帮助在全球范围内根除疟疾，从而巩固这一传统。

 

想想这里发生的突破性工作。 我们对 GHDDI 正在与两个国际组织 Medicines for Malaria Venture 和 Malaria Drug Accelerator 合作开发的一种疟疾候选药物感到特别兴奋。

 

这种候选药物仍在实验室中进行研究，但到目前为止它显示出不同寻常的前景，原因有以下三个。 首先，导致疟疾的寄生虫对当今的许多药物产生了耐药性，这意味着它们不再像以前那样有效。 但这个候选药物似乎是我们所说的“不可抗拒”，因此它有可能在很长一段时间内继续有效。

 

其次，人们需要服用目前的药物三天——但他们并不总是坚持并完成整个疗程。 这种新的候选药物可能只需一次剂量就能治愈这种疾病。

 

第三，看起来这个候选药物不仅可以治疗疾病，而且可以首先预防感染。

 

在该候选药物成为人们可以服用的实际药物之前还有很长的路要走，但我们预计该候选药物将在未来几年内在人体中进行临床试验。

 

我不仅对这个候选药物感到兴奋。 GHDDI 与国际结核病研究和开发组织建立了重要的合作关系，并取得了令人振奋的成果。 一系列新型化合物已被证明与实验室现有的结核病药物具有协同作用。 承诺是一个更短的结核病治疗方案——从标准的 4 到 6 个月缩短到仅 1 到 2 个月。 如果药物在临床试验中证明有效，这将对减少传播和疾病负担产生影响。

 

真正令我兴奋的是世界各地机构进行的所有尖端全球卫生研发的潜在累积影响。 全球创新者社区越能专注于世界面临的最大挑战，就越有人能茁壮成长。

 

GHDDI 专注于抗击疾病，但中国也有杰出的研究人员致力于其他将决定人们未来生活质量的重要优先事项，例如帮助农民适应气候变化并确保每个人都有足够的食物 世界。

 

一直让我着迷的是培育出世界上第一个杂交水稻品种的袁隆平。 他的研究不仅改变了中国农业和中国经济。 它还帮助养活了世界。 他的工作启发了全球最重要的农业研究组织 CGIAR 加大对水稻研究的投资。 袁还教授了来自 50 多个国家的 3,000 多名水稻科学家，他们将从他那里学到的知识应用到本国。 很难想象还有比让数十亿人得以生存和繁荣的发现更重要的了。

 

现在我们需要下一代的发现。 盖茨基金会一直在支持中国科学家开发能够在恶劣天气（包括台风）中茁壮成长的杂交水稻品种，正如我们在 2014 年在菲律宾看到的那样。巴基斯坦最近采用了新品种，将产量提高了三分之一以上。

 

但由于种种原因，新水稻品种在非洲国家并没有以同样的方式流行起来。 因此，该基金会支持中国和西非水稻科学家之间的合作。 他们不仅致力于培育适应当地条件的新品种——他们还与当地合作伙伴合作，确保农民能够获得这些新品种，从而适应不断变化的气候。 在试点中，一些西非国家的收益率高达 50%。

 

这个例子再次强调了伙伴关系的影响。 如果没有中国团队及其在水稻育种方面的丰富经验和专业知识，该项目将无法开展。 但如果没有非洲团队以及他们对当地农民和当地粮食系统的了解，它也不会奏效。 这是我们应该在各地努力争取的合作模式。

 

这些只是我内心深处的两个例子。 该基金会正在与中国合作伙伴一起致力于许多其他优先事项：例如，根除小儿麻痹症； 诊断、预防和治疗艾滋病毒和结核病； 开发更实惠、更可持续的下一代卫生技术。

 

我希望你们现在都比我开始讲话时更加乐观。 我希望您能具体考虑您可以做什么以及与谁一起来促进解决世界面临的最紧迫挑战的方法。

 

我渴望看到 GHDDI、中国乃至世界各地的创新者如何在未来几年为全球进步做出贡献。

 

谢谢。

Remarks at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/speeches/2023/06/bill-china-ghddi-innovation

Bill Gates  June 15, 2023 

Thank you for that nice introduction and thank you all for being here. Our foundation is committed to improving people’s lives by supporting cutting-edge R&D around the world—and our partnership with GHDDI is a big part of that.

I especially want to welcome the innovators, students and young researchers here today. I’m inspired when I imagine the impact you will have if you fully harness the power of science and technology to help find solutions to the world’s biggest health challenges. Diseases like malaria, TB, and neglected tropical diseases are often overlooked by pharmaceutical companies because they disproportionately affect the poorest people.

It’s been a long time since I was in China—four years. The world looked very different then. A lot of people are less confident about the future in 2023 than they were in 2019. In the past four years, the world has faced a pandemic, a resurgence of infectious diseases, the worsening impact of climate change, and in some parts of the world, a hunger crisis. The need to meaningfully address these challenges has never been more urgent. China has made significant gains reducing poverty and improving health outcomes within China. I'm hopeful China can play an even bigger role in addressing the current challenges, particularly those facing African countries.

Despite the challenges the world faces I am still optimistic, for two reasons:

First, if you pull back just a bit and think about the past several decades, instead of years, you see a larger pattern—a pattern of amazing progress that occurred when the world prioritized health equity. My favorite example has to do with child mortality, because I can’t think of anything more important than saving children’s lives.

In 1990, nearly 1 in 10 children would die before the age of 5—most of them in low- and lower-middle income countries, and most from preventable infectious diseases. Now, just a generation later, child deaths have come down significantly, to 1 in 25 children. That comes to more than 7.5 million children saved every year.

Here in China, over that same period, the number of young children who die has dropped by an astonishing 94%. In short, the world has shown what can be accomplished when we set ambitious goals and stay focused on achieving them.

The second reason I’m optimistic is that the potential of science and technology to solve really hard problems has never been greater. mRNA vaccine technology might make vaccines for diseases like TB and malaria possible. To fight these diseases, we need new and better prevention options. As I have said before, I believe that advances in technology, including artificial intelligence, will bring rapid breakthroughs in health care and education, ensuring more people have access to tools that are lifesaving and promise greater opportunities. Innovation in climate technologies – including everything from cleaner ways to generate and store power, to advancements in green steel and cement - will make it possible for the world to reduce emissions without limiting people’s access to affordable, abundant clean energy.

All this innovation—and more—can give us the power to meet the challenges in front of us.

The world is tied together like never before. Consider the climate. It’s changing because of what people in rich countries have been doing for hundreds of years, but so far it’s doing the greatest damage to people in low-income countries—even though they’re the ones who have done the least to contribute to the problem. And the current food crisis in many of those same countries was triggered by a war thousands of miles away in Europe.

So the question I’ve been asking myself is, how do we harness the power of science and innovation to really speed up progress?

The answer is that we can do this by making sure everyone plays a role. To solve the increasingly complex challenges facing our communities and build a future in which all people have the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life, we have to bring the world’s combined expertise to bear. That means addressing climate change and ongoing development needs – both require innovation and ingenuity.

These challenges cannot be solved without the engagement of all parts of society – governments, academia, business, and philanthropy.

Each of these sectors is really good at some things, and not so good at other things. Scientists make ingenious discoveries, but it’s usually businesses that turn those discoveries into products and services people actually use. With the right policies in place, governments can make sure those solutions reach everyone. Philanthropy can drive innovation when markets won’t and bring different organizations together to serve the common good. When all these sectors collaborate, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Chinese innovators have an important role to play in these global partnerships. China has invaluable experience to share from its own successes in health, agriculture, nutrition, and poverty reduction. And it has talent. In labs, startups, and classrooms across the country, young people like many of you are hard at work inventing the solutions of the future:

• new medicines for old diseases, like TB and malaria,
• digital models for scaling up highly customized health care and education,
• crops that can thrive in harsher weather, like climate-smart hybrid rice varieties,
• and technologies that improve people’s quality of life but don’t change the climate, including new approaches to electricity transmission, agriculture, and building materials.

For the next few minutes, I’d like to talk about two areas where I think the world is poised for progress. Health and agriculture.

As you know very well here at GHDDI, one thing our foundation has focused on is a world without malaria, which still kills a child every minute. Even that statistic understates the impact of the disease because it makes about 250 million people desperately sick every year.

The vast majority of malaria cases are in Africa, but that wasn’t always the case. In the 1950s, China had at least 30 million malaria cases annually—and more than 300,000 malaria deaths. But then cases and deaths began to drop steadily, in part because of breakthroughs from Chinese scientists. One of them was Tu Youyou, whose pioneering work led to today’s leading treatment for malaria—and a Nobel Prize. In 2010, China launched its National Malaria Elimination Action Plan. In 2017, it registered zero local infections for the first time. And in 2021, it was certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization.

That’s an amazing accomplishment. But Chinese scientists are doing more than just helping eliminate malaria at home. They are building on this legacy by developing next-generation solutions to help eradicate malaria worldwide.

Consider the breakthrough work happening here. We’re especially excited about one of the malaria drug candidates GHDDI is working on, in partnership with two international organizations, the Medicines for Malaria Venture and the Malaria Drug Accelerator.

This drug candidate is still being studied in the lab, but so far it shows unusual promise, for three reasons. First, the parasite that causes malaria has developed resistance to a lot of today’s drugs, which means they no longer work as well as they used to. But this drug candidate appears to be what we call “irresistible,” so it has the potential to continue to be effective for a very long time.

Second, people need to take the current drugs for three days—but they don’t always follow through and finish the full course of treatment. This new drug candidate may be able to cure the disease in just a single dose.

Third, it looks like this drug candidate might not only treat the disease, but also prevent the infection in the first place.

There is still a long way to go before this drug candidate becomes an actual drug that people can take, but we expect this drug candidate to be in clinical trials in humans in the next several years.

I am not only excited about this one drug candidate. GHDDI has built an important collaboration with international TB research and development organizations that is generating exciting results. A series of novel compounds have been shown to have a synergistic effect with existing TB drugs in the lab. The promise is a much shorter TB treatment regimen – from the standard 4 to 6 months to only 1 to 2 months. This has implications on reduced transmission and disease burden if the drugs prove out in clinical testing.

What really excites me is the potential cumulative impact of all the cutting-edge global health R&D happening at institutions around the world. The more a global community of innovators can focus on the biggest challenges the world faces, the more people can thrive.

GHDDI is focused on fighting disease, but there are brilliant researchers in China working on other essential priorities that will determine the quality of people’s lives in the future such as helping farmers to adapt to climate change and make sure there is enough food for everyone in the world.

I have always been fascinated by Yuan Longping, who developed the world’s first hybrid rice varieties. His research didn’t just transform Chinese agriculture and the Chinese economy. It also helped feed the world. His work inspired the most important global agriculture research organization, CGIAR, to invest more in rice research. Yuan also taught more than 3,000 rice scientists from more than 50 nations, who applied what they learned from him in their home countries. It’s hard to imagine a more important discovery than the one that made it possible for billions of people to survive and thrive.

And now we need the next generation of discoveries. The Gates Foundation has been supporting Chinese scientists to develop hybrid rice varieties that can thrive in harsh weather—including typhoons, as we saw in the Philippines in 2014. Pakistan recently adopted new varieties that boost yields by more than one-third.

But for a variety of reasons, the new rice varieties weren’t catching on in the same way in African countries. So the foundation has supported a partnership between Chinese and West African rice scientists. They’re not only working to breed new varieties adapted to local conditions—they’re also working with local partners to make sure farmers have access to those new varieties so they can adapt to the changing climate. In pilots, yields in some West African countries are up as much as 50 percent.

Again, this example highlights the impact of partnership. The project won’t work without the Chinese team and its vast experience and expertise in rice breeding. But it also won’t work without the African teams and their understanding of local farmers and local food systems. This is the model of collaboration we should be striving for everywhere.

Those are just two examples that are close to my heart. The foundation is working on many other priorities alongside Chinese partners: for example, eradicating polio; diagnosing, preventing, and treating HIV and TB; and developing next-generation sanitation technology that is more affordable and sustainable.

I hope you are all feeling a little more optimistic now than when I started talking. And I hope you are thinking specifically about what you can do, and with whom, to catalyze solutions to the most pressing challenges the world faces. 

I am eager to see how innovators at GHDDI, across China, and around the world contribute to global progress in the years to come.

Thank you.