Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million through their foundation to a philanthropic effort organized by Bill Gates to explore new coronavirus treatments.
The Gates Foundation donated $50 million last week to what it’s calling the “COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.” The initiative brings together life sciences companies to collaborate on the development of new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for COVID-19.
“The Therapeutics Accelerator will enable researchers to quickly determine whether or not existing drugs have a potential benefit against COVID-19,” Chan and Zuckerberg said in a press release. “We hope these coordinated efforts will help stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as provide shared, reusable strategies to respond to future pandemics.”
The two donations are the largest from tech billionaires since the coronavirus outbreak. Wellcome and Mastercard are supporting the effort as well.
The goal of the initiative is to either develop a new drug or adapt an existing treatment that it could help distribute alongside partnering pharmaceutical companies.
The 15 companies participating in the project kicked off the effort by sharing their proprietary libraries of molecular compounds that have some history of being tested with COVID-19.
The lineup includes big names in biotech such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Nissan Motors Chairman Carlos Ghosn was arrested following a whistleblower report that he had under-reported his compensation and used company assets for his personal benefit, according to [reports]
These are the top stories, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Queens, N.Y. and Arlington, Va., will ultimately share the spoils of the hard-fought battle for Amazon's new headquarters. The two will split the planned HQ2s ー and the 50,000 jobs that come along with them. In a lower-profile twist, Nashville, Tenn. will unexpectedly be home to an operation center and about 5,000 new jobs.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is fighting back after the New York Times published an investigation into how the company failed to address Russian meddling in the 2016 election. California officials doubled the number of people missing as a result of the wildfires to more than 600. And Bill Oliver, director of the new sci-fi drama 'Jonathan,' joins Cheddar to discuss his new film starring Ansel Elgort.
Facebook's latest scandal has raised serious questions about founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's oversight of the troubled media giant.
Following an impressive quarterly earnings report, Sonos VP of corporate finance Mike Groeninger told Cheddar about the company's ambitions to move outside the home and become the "world's leading sound experience company."
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday that lasted more than 80 minutes, Mark Zuckerberg declared that an extensive New York Times report about his company's insufficient and self-preserving response to Russian meddling on the platform was "simply untrue."
The New York Times published a bombshell report Wednesday evening detailing how Facebook has navigated public scandals and attacked its critics over the past few years. The stock moved lower Thursday on the news.
With an increasing number of mobility options, putting an end to distracted driving is more urgent than ever. Ryan Luckey, assistant vice president of brand marketing at AT&T, told Cheddar about AT&T's partnership with e-scooter company Bird to keep distracted drivers ー and scooter riders ー off the roads.
The FDA is moving forward with its proposal to restrict sales of most flavored e-cigarettes including popular brand Juul.
