VCU Receives $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations Grant for Innovative Global Health Research

By Anne Buckley

Virginia Commonwealth University announced today that it has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Luiz Shozo Ozaki, Ph.D., associate professor in VCU Life Sciences’ Center for the Study of Biological Complexity. The project is called “Bacterial viruses as tool for blocking transmission of the malaria parasite.”

Ozaki’s project is one of 76 grants announced late Tuesday by the Gates Foundation in the third funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists around the world explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. The grants were provided to scientists in 16 countries on five continents.

To receive funding, Ozaki showed in a two-page application how his idea falls outside current scientific paradigms and might lead to significant advances in global health. The initiative is highly competitive, receiving almost 3,000 proposals in this round.

“The winners of these grants show the bold thinking we need to tackle some of the world’s greatest health challenges,” said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates foundation’s Global Health Program. “I’m excited about their ideas and look forward to seeing some of these exploratory projects turn into life-saving breakthroughs.”

Ozaki and Gail Christie, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, will genetically engineer bacterial viruses (phages) to express inhibitors of the malaria parasite in the mosquito gut upon phage infection of gut bacteria, and test the engineered phages as a biological tool for controlling the transmission of the disease.

“The award is important in that it will enable us to contribute one more gun for the arsenal to combat malaria, which at this moment is tiny,” Ozaki said. “This tool will be first tested with malaria and if efficient, it will be adapted to other diseases that are transmitted through an invertebrate vector such as Lyme disease transmitted by ticks, leishmaniasis transmitted by sand flies, filariosis transmitted by mosquitoes, babesiosis transmitted by ticks, just to name a few.”

Gregory Buck, Ph.D., director of VCU’s Center for the Study of Biological Complexity, said it is clear that “novel strategies, like those encouraged by the Gates Foundation and proposed by Doctors Ozaki and Christie, are required to combat the disease. This award by the Gates Foundation to VCU adds further recognition to the university as a center of excellence in the study of important infectious diseases.”

About Grand Challenges Explorations

Grand Challenges Explorations is a five-year, $100 million initiative of the Gates Foundation to promote innovation in global health. The program uses an agile, streamlined grant process – applications are limited to two pages, and preliminary data are not required.  Proposals are reviewed and selected by a committee of foundation staff and external experts, and grant decisions are made within approximately three months of the close of the funding round.

Applications for the current round of Grand Challenges Explorations are being accepted through November 2, 2009.  Grant application instructions, including the list of topics for which proposals are currently being accepted, are available at http://www.grandchallenges.org/explorations.