The
Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine
and Biological Sciences
(M-NIMBS) at the University of Michigan is one of
43 institutions worldwide selected to receive a Grand
Challenges in Global Health Initiative grant for
groundbreaking research to improve health in developing
countries.
On June 27, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
and the Foundation for the National Institutes of
Health announced $436 million in funding for 43 selected
research projects. I've attached a copy of their
press release at the end of this message.
The $6.3-million Grand Challenges grant to M-NIMBS
will support development and testing of a nanoemulsion-based
vaccine delivery system designed to deliver vaccines
using a simple nasal swab, rather than an injection.
The heat-stable, anti-microbial nanoemulsion could
eliminate the need for vaccine refrigeration, which
often is unavailable in developing countries. Following
tests for safety and efficacy in mice and primates,
a human clinical trial of the nanoemulsion with hepatitis
B vaccine will be conducted in Africa.
"Nanoscale materials can penetrate the epidermis
and mucosa, eliminating the need for needles and
other injectable delivery systems," says James
R. Baker, Jr., M.D., director of M-NIMBS and the
study's lead investigator. "We believe this
nanotechnology-based approach can revolutionize how
vaccines are delivered and will be an important advance
in the prevention of infectious diseases in developing
countries."
The Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative
is a major international effort to achieve scientific
breakthroughs against diseases that kill millions
of people each year in the world's poorest countries.
It is funded with a $450 million commitment from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $27.1
million from the Wellcome Trust, and $4.5 million
from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research,
and the Foundation for the National Institutes
of Health (FNIH).
If you'd like more information about the nanoemulsion-based
nasal vaccine to be developed at the Michigan Nanotechnology
Institute, please contact Sally Pobojewski at pobo@umich.edu
or call (734) 764-6912.
PRESS
RELEASE
Grand
Challenges in Global Health Initiative Selects
43 Groundbreaking Research Projects for More
Than $436 Million in Funding Scientists Around the World to Discover New Ways
to Fight Disease in Poorest Countries
SEATTLE
- The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative,
a major effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs
against diseases that kill millions of people each
year in the world's poorest countries, today offered
43 grants totaling $436.6 million for a broad range
of innovative research projects involving scientists
in 33 countries. The ultimate goal of the initiative
is to create "deliverable technologies" -
health tools that are not only effective, but also
inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and simple
to use in developing countries.
The
initiative is supported by a $450 million commitment
from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as
well as two new funding commitments: $27.1 million
from the Wellcome Trust, and $4.5 million from the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The
initiative is managed by global health experts at
the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health
(FNIH), the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust,
and CIHR. Additional proposed Grand Challenges projects
are under review and may be awarded grants later
this year.
The Grand Challenges initiative was launched by
the Gates Foundation in 2003, in partnership with
the National Institutes of Health, with a $200 million
grant to the FNIH to help apply innovation in science
and technology to the greatest health problems of
the developing world. Of the billions spent each
year on research into life-saving medicines, only
a small fraction is focused on discovering and developing
new tools to fight the diseases that cause millions
of deaths each year in developing countries.
"It's shocking how little research is directed
toward the diseases of the world's poorest countries," said
Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation. "By harnessing the world's
capacity for scientific innovation, I believe we
can transform health in the developing world and
save millions of lives."
Each of the 43 projects seeks to tackle one of 14
major scientific challenges that, if solved, could
lead to important advances in preventing, treating,
and curing diseases of the developing world. The
14 Grand Challenges, which were identified from among
more than 1,000 suggestions from scientists and health
experts around the world, address the following goals:
* Developing improved childhood vaccines that do
not require refrigeration, needles, or multiple doses,
in order to improve immunization rates in developing
countries, where each year 27 million children do
not receive basic immunizations
* Studying the immune system to guide the development
of new vaccines, including vaccines to prevent
malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV, which together
kill more than 5 million people each year
* Developing new ways of preventing insects
from transmitting diseases such as malaria,
which infects 350-500 million people every
year
* Growing more nutritious staple crops to combat
malnutrition, which affects more than 2 billion
people worldwide
* Discovering ways to prevent drug resistance
because many drugs that were once successful
at treating diseases like malaria are losing
their effectiveness
* Discovering methods to treat latent and chronic
infections such as tuberculosis, which nearly
a third of the world's population harbors in
their bodies
* More accurately diagnosing and tracking disease
in poor countries that do not have sophisticated
laboratories or reliable medical recordkeeping
systems
Following the publication of the Grand Challenges
in October 2003, more than 1,500 research projects
were proposed by scientists in 75 countries.
"We were overwhelmed by the scientific community's
response to the Grand Challenges. Clearly, there's
tremendous untapped potential among the world's scientists
to address diseases of the developing world," said
Nobel laureate Dr. Harold Varmus, chair of the international
scientific board that guides the Grand Challenges
initiative. Dr. Varmus is president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center, and former director of the National
Institutes of Health.
"Science has revolutionized health in wealthy
countries, while developing countries have been left
to fight disease with only a handful of tools that
are either grossly inadequate or far too expensive
for widespread use," said Dr. Nirmal Kumar Ganguly,
a member of the Grand Challenges scientific board
and director-general of the Indian Council for Medical
Research. "The Grand Challenges initiative has
provided the resources needed to bring together top
scientists in both developed and developing countries
to help address this imbalance."
Research projects tackle wide range of developing
world health challenges The 43 Grand Challenges projects
will support cutting-edge research managed by teams
of scientists working in partnership across disciplines,
with researchers from the developing world and private
industry as integral partners in many projects. Many
of the initiatives include leaders from fields such
as chemistry, engineering, statistics, and business,
who have never before focused on global health.
While many of the Grand Challenges projects seek
to improve on existing technologies, others attempt
to develop entirely new approaches. Examples of the
43 projects include (see accompanying backgrounder
for descriptions of all projects):
* Heat-stable vaccines: Many life-saving children's
vaccines must be constantly refrigerated to remain
effective, making delivery to areas without electricity
very difficult. Several Grand Challenges projects
will develop low-cost technologies for formulating
vaccines that do not require refrigeration. One research
team will encase vaccines in harmless bacteria that
have natural temperature-regulating abilities. Vaccines
prepared this way could be distributed in ready-to-use
packets, mixed with water, and easily consumed. (Lead
investigator: Dr. Abraham Sonenshein, Tufts University
School of Medicine, U.S.)
* Single-dose vaccines: Most vaccines must be given
over weeks or months - a serious obstacle for families
who must travel long distances to the nearest health
clinic. This project will develop a single-dose version
of the vaccine for whooping cough (pertussis), a
respiratory disease that causes an estimated 200,000
to 400,000 deaths each year, most during early infancy.
The vaccine will be delivered via the mucosal lining
of the nose or mouth, stimulating immunity at the
surfaces where the whooping cough bacteria usually
enters the body. The researchers anticipate that
this novel vaccine formulation could also be used
for vaccines against other neonatal diseases. (Lead
investigator: Dr. Lorne Babiuk, University of Saskatchewan,
Canada)
*
Mosquito control to prevent dengue: The dengue
virus infects up to 100 million people each year,
and can cause severe fever, hemorrhaging, and death.
Controlling the mosquitoes that transmit the disease
is increasingly difficult, in part because many
insecticides are no longer effective. This project
will employ an innovative strategy for controlling
mosquitoes that does not depend on insecticides:
researchers will introduce a bacterial parasite
that occurs naturally in other insects into mosquitoes
so that it causes them to die before they are old
enough to transmit the virus. Mosquitoes would "inherit" the
parasite and pass it from generation to generation.
(Lead investigator: Dr. Scott O'Neill, University
of Queensland, Australia)
* More nutritious staple crops: Poor nutrition contributes
to half of the almost 11 million deaths among children
under 5 each year. This project will develop a more
nutritious strain of cassava, a root that is the
staple food for more than 250 million people in Africa,
but contains little nutrition and can be toxic if
not prepared properly due to low levels of naturally
occurring cyanide. In addition to increasing the
levels of key micronutrients in cassava, researchers
will modify the plant to eliminate naturally occurring
cyanide and to allow it to be stored for longer periods
of time. (Lead investigator: Dr. Richard Sayre, Ohio
State University, U.S.)
* New HIV vaccine strategies: To contain the global
HIV/AIDS epidemic, it is essential to develop an
HIV vaccine that stimulates an effective immune system
response. This project will work to develop an HIV
vaccine that stimulates immune responses in the lining
of the vagina, which serves as the entry point for
HIV for most women. To date, most HIV vaccine candidates
have not specifically targeted entry points in the
body. The research team will work with collaborators
in the U.K. and South Africa to design an HIV vaccine
that would be time-released into the vaginal lining
through low-cost gels or silicone rings that would
be inserted into the vagina. (Lead investigator:
Dr. Robin Shattock, St. George's, University of London,
U.K.)
* Diagnostics for the developing world: Many serious
diseases in developing countries go undetected because
the medical tests available in wealthy countries
are too expensive or impractical for developing countries.
This project will develop a hand-held device that
contains miniaturized versions of essential diagnostics
tests. Health care workers would load a patient's
blood sample onto a disposable test card about the
size of a credit card. The card would be inserted
in the device, and in about 10 minutes results would
be available from a range of tests, such as those
for bacterial infections, nutritional status, and
HIV-related illnesses. (Lead investigator: Dr. Paul
Yager, University of Washington, U.S.)
"The Grand Challenges projects are very ambitious,
and the researchers are taking important risks that
others have shied away from," said Dr. Elias
Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of
Health and a member of the Grand Challenges scientific
board. "Many of these research projects will
succeed, leading to breakthroughs with the potential
to transform health in the world's poorest countries."
"Decoding the human genome and the genomes
of many important pathogens of humans, such as malaria
and tuberculosis, combined with advances in chemistry,
have opened up countless avenues for improving health," said
Dr. Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust,
which contributed $27.1 million to the initiative,
and a member of the Grand Challenges scientific board. "We're
very pleased to support this critical initiative,
and we hope other funders will see the great potential
for research to improve millions of lives in the
developing world."
"The Grand Challenges initiative has brought
together such a broad range of researchers, including
leading scientists from disciplines that have never
before focused on global health," said Dr. Alan
Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institutes of
Health Research, which contributed $4.5 million to
the initiative, and a member of the Grand Challenges
scientific board. "We're particularly pleased
that three Canadian-based teams are part of this
initiative, contributing to this worldwide effort
to harness science to improve global health."
Projects designed to be practical and accessible
in developing countries The project teams have developed
global access plans to help ensure that their discoveries
can lead to new vaccines, staple crops, medical procedures,
and other tools that are practical for use in developing
countries and accessible for those who need them
most.
"Scientific advances are of little value unless
they are accessible to the people who need them," said
Dr. Richard Klausner, executive director of the Global
Health Program at the Gates Foundation and a member
of the Grand Challenges scientific board. "Grand
Challenges researchers will pursue affordable and
practical health solutions that have access built
in from the very start."
About the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to promote
greater equity in four areas: global health, education,
public libraries, and support for at-risk families
in Washington state and Oregon in the U.S. The Seattle-based
foundation joins local, national, and international
partners to ensure that advances in these areas reach
those who need them most. The foundation is led by
Bill Gates' father, William H. Gates Sr., and Patty
Stonesifer, and has an endowment of approximately
$28 billion.
About the Foundation for the National Institutes
of Health The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health
was established by the United States Congress to
support the mission of the National Institutes of
Health - improving health through scientific discovery.
The Foundation identifies and develops opportunities
for innovative public-private partnerships involving
industry, academia, and the philanthropic community.
A non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation, the Foundation
raises private-sector funds for a broad portfolio
of unique programs that complement and enhance NIH
priorities and activities.
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is an independent research
funding charity established in 1936 under
the will of the tropical medicine pioneer
Sir Henry Wellcome. The Trust's mission is
to foster and promote research with the aim
of improving human and animal health, and
it currently spends over £400 million
annually.
About the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
The
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
is the Government of Canada's agency for health
research. CIHR's mission is to create new
scientific knowledge and to catalyze its
translation into improved health, more effective
health services and products, and a strengthened
Canadian health care system. Composed of
13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and
support to close to 10,000 health researchers
and trainees across Canada. On the Internet:
Grand Challenges in Global Health, www.grandchallengesgh.org
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, www.gatesfoundation.org
Foundation for the National Institutes of Health,
www.fnih.org Wellcome Trust, www.wellcome.ac.uk
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca
Sally Pobojewski
Senior Science Writer
Office of Public Relations/Marketing Communications
University of Michigan Medical School
Phone: (734) 615-6912
FAX: (734) 615-2169
E-mail: pobo@umich.edu
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