NEW YORK – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded more than 500 new grants over the last two months, several of which are related to diagnostic and omics projects. Following is a selection of notable grants:
- Imperial College London was awarded approximately $4 million over 36 months to develop and validate tools for wastewater and environmental surveillance in low- and middle-income countries.
- The Africa Health Research Institute of Durban, South Africa, was awarded approximately $1.4 million over 24 months to explore the acceptability, feasibility, and role of blood-based HIV self-testing to support safe decentralization of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) choice in the context of long-acting PrEP.
- Mylab of Pune, India, was awarded approximately $1 million over 18 months to support the development of affordable point-of-care tuberculosis diagnostic technologies.
- The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was awarded approximately $1 million over 19 months to decipher odor signatures of malaria infection and disease in order to develop affordable diagnostics for individuals impacted by diseases disproportionately in low- and middle-income countries.
- The Task Force for Global Health of Decatur, Georgia, was awarded approximately $950,000 over 18 months to develop and validate commercial sources of affordable multiplex bead assay (MBA) antigen panels for key priority pathogens and to accelerate discovery of improved antigens to include in commercial MBA panels for lower-middle-income countries.
- The Task Force for Global Health was also awarded approximately $250,000 over 12 months to validate mpox multiplex bead immunoassay serosurveillance kits to assist in the public health emergency response to mpox in the Congo and neighboring countries.
- Health Research Operations Kenya was awarded approximately $850,000 over 29 months to strengthen the use of multi-pathogen serosurveillance in Kenya. The project will use stored samples from the nationwide Kenya population-based HIV impact assessment (KENPHIA) 2024-25 study to measure and model the seroprevalence/incidence of multiple pathogens of public health importance.
- St. Jude Children's Hospital of Memphis, Tennessee, was awarded approximately $700,000 over 27 months to use transcriptomics to help assess pneumonia etiology in children.
- The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was awarded approximately $500,000 over 37 months to build Africa CDC lab capacity through validation and development of malaria diagnostics surveillance tools.
- The Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research was awarded approximately $500,000 over 36 months to build sustainable malaria molecular surveillance capacity in Papua New Guinea.
- Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston was awarded approximately $200,000 over 17 months to validate metabolite biomarkers in a Zambian cohort and assess production and use of metabolites by vaginal bacteria.