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| | |  Michael Riehle of the University of Arizona in the U.S. will manipulate insulin signaling in mosquito tissues to create a new breed of mosquito that has a shorter lifespan, yet has increased fertility. Because only older mosquitoes can transmit the malaria parasite, the team hopes these fertile, short-lived mosquitoes will replace longer-lived malaria carriers.
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| | |  Sangeeta Joshi of the Middaugh laboratory at the University of Kansas in the U.S. will develop a novel polymer vaccine composed of assembled versions of “needle” and “tip” surface proteins used by Shigella and Salmonella pathogens to trigger bacterial invasion in human intestinal cells, and test it for its ability to induce antibody response. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | |  Daniel Fletcher of the University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. will develop a microscope that attaches to cell phones to capture high-contrast fluorescent images of malaria parasites. Custom software on the phone will automatically count the parasite load, with results and patient information wirelessly transmitted to clinical centers for tracking. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | |  Annette Habluetzel of the University of Camerino in Italy seeks to develop a micropellet food for mosquito larvae made from non-toxic, organic compounds. These pellets, when ingested by the transparent larvae are activated by sunlight and kill the larvae, leaving other animals unharmed. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | |  Simon Foote of the Menzies Research Institute at the University of Tasmania in Australia will use "forward genetic screening" approaches identify mutations that confer resistance after exposure to malaria parasites. The team will use this powerful information to develop drug therapies that target the human host and mimic these protective genetic effects. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Ranjan Nanda, K.V.S. Rao and Virander Chauhan of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology in India will gather breath samples from tuberculosis patients and use gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify and track unique molecules such as volatile organic compounds that can serve as biomarkers to diagnose tuberculosis. The overall goal is to then create a handheld “electronic nose” to diagnose the disease in resource-poor settings. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Alexander Cole of the University of Central Florida in the U.S. will attempt to restore natural expression of retrocyclins, antiviral peptides whose production in humans has been latent for millions of years. Cole will test inexpensive and widely available antibiotics for their ability to induce production of these retrocyclins, leading to its possible use as a vaginal microbicide. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Craig Morita of the University of Iowa in the U.S. will engineer Salmonella and Shigella vaccine vectors to overproduce an essential antigen to stimulate gamma delta T cells, to boost mucosal immune response against these enteric pathogens. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Udantha Abeyratne of the University of Queensland in Australia proposes using low-cost devices such as mobile phones and mp3 players equipped with microphones to record cough and sleeping sounds that do not require direct contact with the patient. Recording will be analyzed using new algorithms in human speech analysis to identify sounds that characterize the presence of pneumonia. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Moriya Tsuji of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in the U.S. will test whether the human malaria parasite can infect mice engineered with humanized livers and red blood cells by producing human erythropoietin. The goal of this project is part of a larger effort to create a mouse model capable of supporting the full malaria life cycle for use in preclinical testing of new anti-malarial therapies and vaccines. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Steven Maranz of Weill Medical College in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that providing children high levels of flavanols, compounds found in chocolate, green tea, cola and shea nuts, deprives malaria parasites of lipids needed to survive, keeping parasite infection at levels low enough to elicit a strong immune response that builds lifelong immunity. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Hongshen Ma of the University of British Columbia in Canada will develop an inexpensive hand-held device consisting of a series of funnels of decreasing size that will separate healthy red-blood cells, which can easily squeeze through openings, from malaria-parasite infected blood cells which become more rigid. A simple integrated optical sensor would then count stained cells in these various stages to determine the state of infection and inform treatment options. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Jinhee Lee and Gary Ostroff of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the U.S. will test the idea of delivering small interfering RNA (siRNAs) via glucan particles in an oral TB vaccine formulation. The team will utilize the siRNAs’ ability to block immunosuppressive signaling and amplify the immune response. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Federica Marelli-Berg of Imperial College London in the United Kingdom will test the theory that using “homing factors” as vaccine adjuvants will induce the development of memory T cells thereby generating site-specific immunity against pathogens in the gut. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Paul Kim of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will modify HIV by removing the viral genome and replacing the outer domain of the gp120 protein, used by the virus to invade host immune cells, with receptors normally used by gp120 to bind to host cells. When this modified ghost virus encounters native HIV during an infection, hidden epitopes are exposed to the host immune system, stimulating antibodies to clear the infection. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Changhuei Yang of the California Institute of Technology in the U.S. will evaluate the feasibility of using a "microscope on a chip" along with a hand-held reader to detect and analyze cells and parasites in bodily fluids. If successful; this technology, which does not use traditional lenses, could provide diagnostic capabilities for a wide range of diseases including malaria. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Rajan George of Paladin Biosciences, a division of Paladin Labs Inc. in Canada will produce a vaccine with multiple malaria antigens to target dendritic cell receptors and without the need for an adjuvant, in an effort to induce both antibody and cell-mediated immune responses to the malaria parasite at various stages of the infection. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Lena Hulden of the University of Helsinki in Finland will test the hypothesis that saliva from newly emerging mosquitoes activates dormant P. vivax parasites in the liver. By robust statistical analysis of the timing of P. vivax outbreaks, as well as molecular analysis of mosquito saliva, Hulden hopes to eventually identify the trigger for these relapses in hopes of controlling outbreaks. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | David Schwartz of Hackensack University Medical Center in the U.S. will test an intradermal injection that increases levels of vitamin A and blocks vitamin D3 metabolism. These important mechanisms can “educate” B cells to home to the gut and to make mucosal antibodies against many viruses, including HIV. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Viktor Vegh of The University of Queensland in Australia will test the efficacy of using low-cost nuclear magnetic resonance technologies that take advantage of earth’s magnetic field to detect malaria parasites. The team will examine blood samples to detect hemozoin, a waste product of malarial parasites, to determine the presence of malaria infection. |
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| | | | Madhu Malo of Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in the U.S. will investigate whether maintaining the normal intestinal commensal bacteria using oral supplementation of intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP), a small intestinal brush-border enzyme, will prevent or cure infection by pathogenic bacteria. A successful project would generate a universal prophylactic and therapeutic strategy against diarrheal diseases. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Margaret Njoroge and Thomas Egwang of Med Biotech Laboratories in Uganda will develop and test an intranasal vaccine to be administered to young women before pregnancy, and again after childbirth, to confer anti-malarial immunity in their babies. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Victor Nussenzweig of the New York University School of Medicine in the U.S. seeks to develop a small molecule drugs to inhibit key kinase enzymes in the malaria parasite that are thought to control latency in parasite infections. Such fundamental knowledge may enable new tools to clear the latent forms of P. vivax parasites or block transmission of the disease by targeting sporozoites. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | David Wright of Vanderbilt University in the U.S. will develop a new low-cost diagnostic tool in which a droplet of malaria-infected blood deposited on a glass slide will, based on fluid dynamics, leave a ring-like pattern as the blood evaporates. The slide will be prepared with a solution that will interact with a particular protein of the malaria parasite to visualize this “coffee ring stain,” allowing for easy interpretation and ready diagnosis. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Krystal Evans of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia will knock out several proteins that support the expression of the major virulence factor for the malaria parasite. Their aim is create a genetically-attenuated live malaria vaccine that elicits a strong immune response against diverse strains of the parasite. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Renjie Chang of Lavax, Inc. in the U.S. has developed a natural food substance that reduces HIV viruses in the mother’s milk, and will test it along with scientists at University of Toledo for its ability to block HIV transmission from mothers to infants. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Suzanne Smith of STAR Analytical Services in the U.S. will study recorded cough samples with acoustic vocalization-analysis technology to identify sound characteristics that indicate specific symptoms of pneumonia with the aim of rapidly identifying the cause and severity of respiratory illness. It is hoped that such acoustic landmarks would help in the differentiation between viral infections and bacterial illnesses, each of which may require different treatments. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Deepak Gaur, Chetan Chitnis and Virander Chauhan of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology in India will attempt to develop a blood-stage malaria vaccine that uses a combination of two proteins found among a wide diversity of malaria parasites. Their goal is to stimulate antibodies that would stop parasite infection of red blood cells by blocking multiple pathways of invasion. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | Joseph Vinetz of the University of California, San Diego in the U.S. will attempt to create a new mouse model that mimics both human liver and blood cell function. These new mouse models should allow human malaria parasites to complete their full life cycle in the models and provide a new tool for testing anti-malarial strategies, including drugs and vaccines.
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| | | | Kate Edwards of University of California, San Diego in the U.S. will test the theory that brief bouts of exercise consisting of cycling and weight lifting will increase antibody and cell-mediated responses to a pneumococcal vaccination administered immediately after the physical activity. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Juan Santiago of Stanford University in the U.S. will develop small, disposable diagnostic device that utilizes isotachophoresis, a technique that separates charged particles, to concentrate a key biomarker of malaria parasites. The goal of this technique is to provide test results within three minutes at a sensitivity much greater than current tests, allowing for detection of malaria at much earlier stages of infection and in asymptomatic individuals. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Claudia Pastori of Fondazione S. Raffaele del Monte Tabor in Italy seeks to induce mucosal immunity against HIV by using a bacterial adhesive protein to target antigens to specific cells. The goal of this approach is to present conserved epitopes of HIV in their natural form to elicit the production of protective antibodies in the tissues where these antibodies will be effective. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Bryan Greenhouse of the University of California, San Francisco, will design a series of microsatellites, short DNA repeats which have variable lengths in different parasites, to track individual parasites in two regions close to malaria elimination. If successful, this approach will provide insight into parasite transmission networks and help to guide future malaria eradication efforts. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Michael Lebens of the University of Gothenburg Institute for Vaccine Research in Sweden proposes to develop a new oral cholera vaccine using a single cholera strain that expresses antigens for both the Inaba and Ogawa serotypes, as well as produces cholera toxin subunits that act as an adjuvant to stimulate mucosal immune activity. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Michael Leibowitz of the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in the U.S. will investigate whether malaria parasites bind to, invade and replicate in the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels to test the theory that endothelial cells play an important role in the development of malaria infection and may serve as undiscovered reservoirs for parasite latency. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Shahid Khan of Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands seeks to produce a multi-stage malaria vaccine using transgenic sporozoites. These parasite forms will also present transmission blocking antigens to not only generate protective immunity against early stages of infection, but also generate antibodies to block transmission via mosquitoes. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Wei Lu of the University of Michigan in the U.S. will test the theory that red blood cells infected with malaria have significantly different characteristics when subjected to light in ultra-far infrared spectrum. Using these techniques, this project aims to develop a non-invasive tool to scan capillaries near the body surface and diagnose malaria. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Jeremy Webb and collaborators at the School of Biological Sciences in the United Kingdom will search for unique proteins that allow pneumococcal bacteria to form biofilms on mucosal surfaces. The team will use laser capture micro-dissection “laser tweezers” to dissect these bacterial communities with the goal of finding antigens common to all serotypes and could be used as the basis for future vaccines. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Scott Phillips, of Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. proposes to develop a polymer reagent to be deposited at the bottom of a small paper cup used to collect a sputum sample, where it will detect proteins secreted by tuberculosis and turn indicate TB-positive samples by changing color. | | | Find Out More... |
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| | | | Nirbhay Kumar of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will use a technique called codon harmonization to fully and correctly express a complex malaria gamete surface protein. The sexual stages of malaria parasites have been shown to be particularly vulnerable to antibody targeting. This approach may be able to block the transmission of malaria in insect vectors. | | | Find Out More... |
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