The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health program this week awarded ten grants totaling $7.7 million for research into biomarkers for tuberculosis.
Among the recipients and their collaborators are a number of proteomics researchers and firms.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based Forsyth Institute received funding for work validating seven tuberculosis proteins identified as potential biomarkers by Antonio Campos-Neto, head of the institute's Global Infectious Disease Research Center. For this work, the Forsyth researchers, in collaboration with scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will use biomarker firm Quanterix's Single Molecule Array detection system (see story, this issue).
Boulder, Colo.-based proteomics firm Somalogic received an award funding use of its Somamer system to identify protein biomarkers capable of detecting active tuberculosis in blood samples.
Rob Moritz of the Institute for Systems Biology received an award funding use of selected-reaction monitoring mass spectrometry to identify and validate candidate biomarkers for detecting and distinguishing between active and latent tuberculosis infections.
Other grant recipients include Karen Dobos of Colorado State University, who will identify and validate protein signatures of exosomes that could be diagnostic of the disease, and Dan Feldheim of University of Colorado, Boulder, who will use apatamers to detect biomarkers for tuberculosis in urine.