Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has invested € 15 million in the Walloon biotechnology company Univercells, based near Charleroi.
This is the fourth time Gates has put money into the company, which has developed a sort of miniature production line capable of turning out large volumes of vaccines at low cost.
His introduction to the company came in 2016, and he has invested some € 30 million since.
The company intends to set up more production lines for vaccines, including for Covid-19. Univercells currently produces a polio vaccine whose low production cost makes it cheaper to distribute to parts of the world where the disease is still a problem. There are also production lines in the pipeline for rubella, rabies and measles.