Create New Tools to Accelerate the Eradication of Malaria (Round 3)

Roadblock:

Thanks to recent progress against malaria, the global eradication of the disease has emerged as a feasible long-term goal.  However, eradicating malaria will require innovative new tools and approaches to stop transmission of the disease.

What We Are Looking For:

The goal of this topic is to discover novel malaria interventions for use in future global eradication efforts. These interventions would add to traditional strategies that are already in use (e.g., bed nets) or in development (e.g., vaccines). We seek proposals that are "off the beaten track," significantly radical in conception, daring in premise, and clearly different from the approaches currently being developed or employed.

A few of the many options to be considered include:

• New tools and approaches for reducing malaria transmission, especially from low levels to zero;  
• New approaches for the "radical cure" of malaria, including explicit targeting of latent stages of the parasite;
• Tools and technologies for understanding fundamental aspects of pre-erythrocytic, latent, and sexual stages of malaria parasites;
• New interventions designed to target human and vector populations that are hardest to reach;
• New interventions that will be valued and used by individuals and communities even after malaria rates fall and the perceived threat of the disease is low;
• New tools and technologies for monitoring and surveillance of the pathogen, including methods to detect latent and subclinical infection in both human and non-human reservoirs and vectors;
• New strategies to apply interventions to populations, such as those considering the focal and heterogeneous nature of transmission.

For this initiative, we will not consider funding for:

• Efforts to discover traditional vaccine candidates for use in humans; 
• Theoretical epidemiology without an explicit hypothesis about preventing or interrupting transmission or a concurrent testing of a new intervention;
• Application of existing interventions without testing significantly novel approaches to improving access or delivery; 
• New drug candidates, targets, or formulations, unless they involve new chemical entities or novel approaches that offer a clear rationale for outperforming existing or emerging therapies; 
• Testing of existing vector control methods, pesticide targets, or the discovery of new active ingredients for traditional pesticide use.