Medical Cure Research

Fund the search for cures to the world’s diseases. When your scientists achieve a breakthrough, the cure is given freely to hospitals everywhere — raising public health in every city and earning your company a large amount of Corporate Philanthropy (plus a front-page newspaper headline).

Requires the Billionaire Life DLC

The disease cures and the Corporate Philanthropy system only appear when this DLC is enabled. Without it, your R&D centers research only ordinary product/Internet technology.

What it does

  • Disease cures are a new branch of research carried out in your ordinary R&D Center — no special building is needed.
  • Each cure is developed by raising its tech level over many years of research. When that level reaches the goal of 500, you have the breakthrough.
  • A breakthrough does three things:
    1. Corporate Philanthropy — a big one-time boost to your company’s CP score.
    2. City Health — the cure is shared to hospitals worldwide, permanently raising the health rating in every city (not just yours).
    3. News — a front-page “Cure for <disease> Discovered!” headline.
  • A cure is public domain: once any company discovers it, it benefits the whole world and is removed from everyone’s research list (there is no point curing it twice).

How to research a cure

  1. Build or open an R&D Center and create a research team (an R&D job).
  2. Open the Select Technology window. With the Billionaire Life DLC on, you’ll see two tabs at the top:
    • [Commercial] — ordinary technology (Internet, products, etc.).
    • [Philanthropy] — the disease cures.

    Click [Philanthropy].

  3. Pick a disease from the list and assign your team to it. (In talent mode you also hire a Research Team Lead for the project, just like any other research.)
  4. The “How Long is the Research?” box asks how long to commit the team. Pick a duration from the list (6 months up to 10 years); the longer you commit, the more tech the period adds (the Expected Tech Advancement column).
  5. Research proceeds automatically. The bigger and more skilled your linked R&D team, the faster the cure is developed — but a cure is a major, multi-year undertaking, so expect a serious commitment for each one.

Reading the “How Long is the Research?” box

Below the duration list, two lines tell you exactly where a research period will leave you:

  • Tech Level: current + advancement = resulting — the cure’s current tech level, plus the advancement the highlighted duration adds, equals the level you’ll reach when that period ends. (Highlight a different duration and the numbers update.)
  • Tech Goal: 500 (cure breakthrough) — the tech level a cure must reach to be discovered. This line appears only for disease cures.

One period usually isn’t enough. A single research period rarely takes a cure all the way to 500, so you’ll set consecutive periods over many years, watching the Tech Level climb toward the Tech Goal each time. The breakthrough fires the moment it reaches 500.

A cure you (or anyone) is currently researching is highlighted in colour in the list, with a note such as “Acme Corp is already researching this cure” (see Racing rivals below).

The cure tree

There are 30 cures in 10 disease families, each family a short chain of three: root → middle → leaf. You must cure the earlier disease in a chain before the next one unlocks — but because cures are public domain, any company’s breakthrough unlocks the next step for everyone.

  • The 10 root cures are available from the very start — so you always have something to work on.
  • Deeper cures are worth more: both the Corporate Philanthropy reward and the City Health bonus rise from root to leaf. The leaf cure of each family is the biggest prize.
Family First (root) Then Finally (leaf)
Respiratory Cystic Fibrosis Asthma Pneumonia
Oncology (Solid Tumors) Glioblastoma Pancreatic Cancer Lung Cancer
Blood & Breast Sickle Cell Anemia Leukemia Breast Cancer
Neurodegenerative ALS (Motor Neuron) Parkinson’s Disease Alzheimer’s Disease
Neurological Huntington’s Disease Multiple Sclerosis Epilepsy
Cardiovascular Hypertension Stroke Coronary Heart Disease
Renal & Metabolic Macular Degeneration Chronic Kidney Disease Type 2 Diabetes
Endocrine & Autoimmune Muscular Dystrophy Rheumatoid Arthritis Type 1 Diabetes
Viral Infections Dengue Fever Hepatitis HIV / AIDS
Epidemic Infections Universal Influenza Tuberculosis Malaria

The window shows the disease’s family in the middle column (“Disease Cures”), its research progress, and the Corporate Philanthropy reward.

Rewards in detail

Position in family Corporate Philanthropy City Health bonus (every city)
Root (1st) +30 small
Middle (2nd) +35 moderate
Leaf (3rd) +40 largest
  • The City Health bonus is added to the hospital-driven health rating in all cities and is permanent. It helps under-served cities the most.
  • Because the bonus applies everywhere, even the smaller root rewards are very powerful across a whole nation — and the effect stacks as you complete more cures.

(Exact reward numbers may be tuned in a future update.)

Seeing the health effect

You can watch cures at work on the Cities → Quality of Life page. When Medical Cure Research is active, the Health rating splits into two indented sub-lines that add up to it:

Line What it measures
Health The city’s total health rating (the two lines below, added together).
   Health – Hospitals The part that comes from the city’s own hospitals (their capacity vs. population).
   Health – Medical Cures The part contributed by disease cures discovered anywhere in the world — the same in every city, and permanent.

Hover the ? beside each line for a reminder of what it covers. As more cures are discovered, the Health – Medical Cures line rises in every city at once.

Racing rivals

AI companies research cures too. The competition is friendly by design:

  • No wasted effort against the AI. An AI company will never start a cure that someone else is already researching, so a cure you’re developing won’t be snatched out from under you by an AI.
  • You may choose to race. If you select a cure an AI is already working on (shown highlighted), only the first company to reach the breakthrough gets the reward — so racing a rival is a gamble. The warning lets you pick a different cure instead if you’d rather not compete.
  • When a rival finishes a cure, it’s done for everyone: it leaves the list, the world’s health improves, and the next cure in that family unlocks for all companies.

Tips

Start with the rootsAll 10 are open immediately; clearing a root unlocks its family and (for you or the AI) moves the chain forward.
Chase the leavesLeaf cures (Lung Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Breast Cancer, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, …) give the most Corporate Philanthropy and the biggest health boost — but you must clear the two before them first.
Build a strong R&D teamCures take many years; more linked R&D units and a skilled team lead shorten the wait.
Let rivals do groundworkIf the AI cures a disease, its successor unlocks for you too — you can pick up the chain where it helps you most.
Watch the newspaperEach breakthrough — yours or a rival’s — is reported, so you can follow the global race.

Capitalism Lab — Billionaire Life DLC · Medical Cure Research player guide · see also the Philanthropy Page and Affordable Housing Program guides