Global Health Innovative Technology Fund

The Global Health Innovative Technology Fund, known as the GHIT Fund, is a public-private partnership headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, that finances research and development of new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for diseases that disproportionately affect people in developing countries. It was established in 2013 with an initial commitment of more than one hundred million dollars, conceived through discussions between Tachi Yamada and BT Slingsby, a former Eisai pharmaceutical executive who became the fund's founding chief executive. Its partners include the government of Japan through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, sixteen pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies including Astellas, Takeda, Johnson and Johnson, and GSK, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the United Nations Development Programme. The fund prioritizes research on HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases across four research platforms, target research, screening, hit-to-lead, and product development, and by 2022 it had invested more than one hundred fifteen million dollars across more than sixty partnerships, including six candidates that reached first-in-human clinical trials, most of them relevant to the malaria and tuberculosis programs this fund was categorized under; the fund itself is disease-agnostic across HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases rather than exclusively a tuberculosis program.