If a philanthropist wants to aim a lot of money at biomedical research, there's many good ways to do it, but I think the most high-impact, lowest-risk would be to fund clinical trials for non-patentable interventions. There are plenty of drugs and therapies that are well-known to work, but which can't be used (or can only be used through much-more-expensive variants) in clinical settings, due to the lack of anyone willing to fund the studies to formally prove their effectiveness to the FDA.
A notable example is recent efforts to fund a study on the use of corticosteroids and vitamin C to stabilize patients with sepsis [1]- this would be a huge impact on mortality for patients with all sorts of diseases, since sepsis is a common consequence of lowered immune system functioning or post-surgical infections, but since neither corticosteroids or vitamin C are patentable, there's no commercial incentive to fund trials. Another example is the use of MDMA as a psychiatric drug- any highschool dropout can tell you that it works as a powerful mood-elevating chemical with relatively rare and benign side effects (at least by the standards of psychopharmaceuticals,) but clinical trials were only recently begun after decades of agitating from psychiatrists.
The most potent benefits from philanthropic funding tend to be in areas that can't be reached by conventional for-profit commercial work. There's still much more low-hanging fruit out there.
A notable example is recent efforts to fund a study on the use of corticosteroids and vitamin C to stabilize patients with sepsis [1]- this would be a huge impact on mortality for patients with all sorts of diseases, since sepsis is a common consequence of lowered immune system functioning or post-surgical infections, but since neither corticosteroids or vitamin C are patentable, there's no commercial incentive to fund trials. Another example is the use of MDMA as a psychiatric drug- any highschool dropout can tell you that it works as a powerful mood-elevating chemical with relatively rare and benign side effects (at least by the standards of psychopharmaceuticals,) but clinical trials were only recently begun after decades of agitating from psychiatrists.
The most potent benefits from philanthropic funding tend to be in areas that can't be reached by conventional for-profit commercial work. There's still much more low-hanging fruit out there.