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What first drew you to the global health innovation field?

Throughout my career, I've been an academic, but I've worked closely with business. I've always been interested in taking science through to impact in the real world. There is no greater place to do that than in the global health agenda. What drew me into the area of global health innovation is this desire to take the dreams of science and turn them into the reality of patient benefits.

Could you provide background on the Wellcome Trust for a lay audience?

The Wellcome Trust is a very large, private foundation whose purpose is to support science and turn it into improvements into human health. We were established in the 1930s and are headquartered in the UK. Today, we're one of the largest private foundation in the world. We support an extraordinarily diverse range of activities, but our primary work is in supporting long-term blue sky* biomedical science. That then translates into human health through innovation, through public and cultural engagement.

*Blue sky science is scientific research in domains where "real-world" applications are not immediately apparent. It has been defined as "curiosity-driven science."

What makes the Wellcome Trust unique amongst science and innovation funders?

There are several elements that make the Wellcome Trust unusual. One is our scale. We distribute around a billion British Pounds a year in funding.

The second is the depth and breadth of our research. We support thousands and thousands of researchers. We draw on that expertise and knowledge and bring people together in a way that allows us to focus on contemporary problems of human health. We do this from an extraordinarily strong evidence-based.

Third, we are independent and private. We can pursue long-term goals that would be very difficult for other organizations to focus on. We could take a 50-year view or we can take a five year view. There's a small group who are responsible for the stewardship of the organization.

In your opinion, what makes Japanese innovation unique?

Japan is very well-known for producing outstanding, quality science and turning it into real-world innovations that have real-world impact. We think there's a lot to learn from the Japanese scientific culture, the Japanese innovation culture, and the Japanese business culture. GHIT is the perfect partner for us in accessing all of those great assets to help us pursue our aims at Wellcome.

GHIT's projects are focused on some of the most profound global health problems of today. Its consortium of partners will allow us to make better progress with a greater degree of energy, urgency, and creativity. We are going to solve these problems faster because of the partnerships that GHIT has put together.

What do you see as the unique capacity of Japanese pharma?

The Japanese pharmaceutical industry is extraordinarily productive at delivering products that improve human health. The companies have a great understanding of how to translate the great science that comes from Japan. The group of of Japanese pharmaceutical companies that are involved in GHIT are central to its future success.

I think all the life science companies—Japanese and international—that are involved in GHIT and more broadly in global health really understand all the different elements of the global scientific culture. That matters because the early translation of promising findings requires a cultural understanding.

Being able to properly mine the scientific community in order to find those gems is similar to mining for diamonds or gold. In other words, you have all these assets and you know the answers you're looking for are there, but you have to find them - and then invest in cutting and polishing. Then you have to find ways to get them in front of the right people in order to ensure that they meet their market.

Pharmaceutical companies are extraordinarily well placed to understand how different groups of people will respond to different types of products and intervention, and Japanese companies in particular play a key role in that.

What do you see as the key role of government in global health science and innovation?

Seeing global health as a global good and not simply the problem of one particular group of people to a large extent has to be driven by governments. That provides an impetus for people to work together. It also provides an impetus for governments to work together because disease knows no geographic boundaries.

It's wonderful to see GHIT being supported so strongly by the Japanese government, which has played such a key role in GHIT's establishment. From my perspective, engagement, funding, and political support from governments are all very important. Global health is a global problem. It's not simply a problem for one group of people in a particular part of the world.

How do you think young people perceive the science and innovation space—particularly as it relates to global health?

There is no more compelling proposition to a young person than the promise of improving millions of people's lives and giving them a better quality of life. It takes hard work, tenacity, imagination, and creativity, but there is nothing more exciting. We need the smartest minds that most diverse group of people we can get to make that a reality.

We need to set realistic expectations in this era of instant gratification: when someone discovers something scientific with real promise that there is a long period of time in turning that into something that has an impact on human health. We also need to make that more glamorous. We need to make biotech, global health, life science, entrepreneur and innovation a bit cooler than it is now.

Do you think the GHIT business model could be applied to other sectors?

GHIT's model is one that with some modification is likely to be important for all of the major complex challenges that society faces now in the next decade, in 50 years, 100 years. Global health is one of the major challenges of our time, but there are others, such as security, agriculture, water, and climate. While great progress can made through a commercially driven imperative, very often the potential impact is so profound on human kind that it needs a commercial and a public approach. GHIT is a sweet spot of that.

We have to collaborate and use the individual strengths of individual parts of our society if we're going to work together to solve these complex problems.

The affiliations and positions listed in this interview are at the time of publication of the interview in 2017.