The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that it will invest US $35 million in grants to
expand the pipeline of groundbreaking ideas that can help women and children live more prosperous
and healthy lives. You can read the press release at http://www.grandchallenges.org/about/Newsroom/Pages/Nov2011_release.aspx.
The funding, announced at the annual Grand Challenges Meeting in Delhi, India, will support two new Grand
Challenges in Global Health grant programs:
* Preventing Preterm Birth, managed in partnership with the Global Alliance for the Prevention of Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), an initiative of Seattle Children’s, will invest US $20 million in the discovery and development of interventions to prevent preterm birth and stillbirth by limiting infection and improving nutrition. For more information, please visit
http://www.gapps.org/healthybirth
* Discover New Ways to Achieve Healthy Growth will invest US $15 million in research to discover the causes of growth faltering during the first 1,000 days of life and to identify effective and affordable interventions to promote healthy growth. To learn more, please visit
http://www.grandchallenges.org/GrantOpportunities/Pages/healthygrowth.aspx.
In addition, the Gates Foundation announced $9 million in funding for a new related initiative, “Biomarkers of Gut Function and Health,” that seeks to develop non-invasive measures of intestinal functioning as a way to assess infant health and development. To learn more, please visit
http://www.grandchallenges.org/biomarkers/Pages/Gut_Function_Biomarkers.aspx
Several new grant awards through the broader Grand Challenges family of programs were also announced today at the meeting in Delhi:
* 110 grants of US $100,000 each will support innovative
proposals to improve nutrition and development in young children,
as well as address infectious diseases such as polio and HIV.
The funding was awarded through Round 7 of Grand Challenges
Explorations (GCE)
* 9 GCE projects that have shown promise in tackling global
health challenges such as malaria and tuberculosis will receive
additional funding of up to US $1 million each to enable
researchers to continue to advance their ideas toward impact.
To learn more about GCE, please visit
http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/Introduction.aspx
Please remember that grant proposals for GCE Round 8 are
currently being accepted until November 17, 2011 on the
following topics:
Application instructions can be found at
http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/ApplicationInstructions.aspx
* Protect Crop Plants from Biotic Stresses From Field to Market
* Design New Approaches to Optimize Immunization Systems
* Explore New Solutions for Global Health Priority Areas
* Explore Nutrition for Healthy Growth of Infants and Children
* Apply Synthetic Biology to Global Health Challenges
Thank you for your support and continued commitment to solving
the world’s greatest health and development challenges.
The Grand Challenges Team
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation