Gates Foundation to invest $50 mn in biotech firm Intarcia Therapeutics

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $50 million in Boston-based biotech firm Intarcia Therapeutics and plans to contribute another $90 million to the company in its bid to improve HIV prevention in Africa.

The money from The Gates Foundation will help fund a preventive HIV treatment based on a ''mini-pump'' technology Intarcia developed that could also be used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

''There's a vital need for an HIV / AIDS intervention that allows those at risk to incorporate prevention more easily into their daily lives,'' Gates foundation chief executive Sue Desmond-Hellmann said in a statement.

In November, Intarcia filed for federal approval of its ''mini-pump'' technology to deliver drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The pump, filled with drugs is implanted under patients' skin near their abdomen and body fluids are used to activate the device, which delivers medicine regularly for months at a time.

According to Intarcia spokesman Greg Baird, the system was meant to limit the kind of  ''human behavior'' that sometimes made drug treatments ineffective - such as when patients forgot to take a dose or fail to use a medicine as prescribed.

While the company's type 2 treatment was focused on helping people who are already afflicted with the disease, the Gates Foundation-funded HIV initiative would centre on a prophylactic treatment to prevent the spread of the virus.

"The ultimate goal is developing an HIV prophylaxis device that will save lives in the developing world," Andrew Farnum, the foundation's director of program-related investments, told The Wall Street Journal.

"There's a vital need for an HIV/AIDS intervention that allows those at risk to incorporate prevention more easily into their daily lives," foundation chief executive Sue Desmond-Hellmann said in a statement, according to the Boston Globe.

According to newspaper, the use of drugs to prevent infection, was called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, and the only current drug available was a pill from Gilead Sciences Inc called Truvada, which had been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infections by 90 per cent.