NEW YORK – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded more than 250 new grants in late May and June, several of which are related to omics and diagnostic projects. Following is a selection of notable grants:
- The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, was awarded approximately $6.8 million over 23 months "to support the expansion of sequencing and utilization of new analysis methods for poliovirus in the WHO AFRO region."
- Ifakara Health Institute of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was awarded $5 million over 36 months "to conduct malaria molecular surveillance in Tanzania to inform National Malaria Control Program and policymakers."
- The University of Washington Foundation in Seattle was awarded approximately $3.1 million over 46 months "to apply more sensitive, specific, and quantitative molecular tests to malaria clinical trials and field studies in endemic areas to improve our ability to identify, understand, and advance candidate vaccines and drugs."
- The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria of Geneva, Switzerland, was awarded $640,125 over 36 months "to support the Global Fund with operational resources to plan for early introduction of innovative diagnostics for tuberculosis at the lowest possible price."
- King's College London was awarded $598,344 over 37 months "to understand the use of placental biomarkers in guiding decision to delivery in preeclampsia."
- PartitionBio of Saffron Walden, UK, was awarded approximately $580,536 over 11 months "to develop a low-cost novel drug delivery platform for oligonucleotides" for use in low- and middle-income countries.
- The University of Colorado Denver was awarded $324,892 over 16 months "to demonstrate multi-pathogen serosurveillance of multiple priority infectious diseases in LMICs to validate optimal multiplex serological assays and to provide training to LMIC partners."
- Wits Health Consortium of Johannesburg, South Africa, was awarded $330,000 over 23 months "to assess a novel oligo-based sequencing platform for the detection of pathogens causing meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa."
- Wits Health Consortium was also awarded $228,189 over 11 months "to expand the targets included in a Klebsiella pneumoniae Fluidigm [now Standard BioTools] assay and improve its coverage of colonizing and invasive isolates from South Africa and Kenya."
- Biosurv International of Salisbury, UK, was awarded $281,292 over 12 months "to support the development of wastewater and environmental surveillance in [the Democratic Republic of the Congo]."
- Dhulikhel Hospital of Nepal was awarded $202,070 over 18 months "to establish an integrated ecological, community, hospital and genomic surveillance system for dengue in Nepal."