L. David Sibley at Washington University in St. Louis in the U.S. is developing a long-term in vitro intestinal epithelial culture system for the intracellular parasite Cryptosporidium, which causes severe diarrheal disease in both humans and animals, and is refractory to many anti-parasitic drugs. Currently, Cryptosporidium can only be grown in infected calves or in short-term in vitro cultures, which cannot be used for the high-throughput chemical screens needed to identify new drugs. In Phase I, they optimized the in vitro culture of isolated intestinal stem cells from human and mouse biopsies, and identified factors to control their differentiation into primary epithelial monolayers, which can better support the growth of intestinal pathogens. This led to around a five-fold increase in the rate of asexual replication of Cryptosporidium, which was enough to successfully test a chemical growth inhibitor. In Phase II, they will further improve culture conditions to support longer-term in vitro growth of Cryptosporidium, which will then be tested for stability and infectivity. They will also develop antibodies against specific developmental stages to help identify culture conditions that enable the parasite to undergo a complete life cycle, which will be valuable for culturing and screening efforts.

Sara Grobbelaar of Stellenbosch University in South Africa will develop a platform that can analyze existing real-time data on the stocks of health products at clinics across South Africa and present it to all players in the supply chain to ensure products are available when needed. In partnership with a Northern academic institution they will collect and sort relevant data, analyze trends, and develop decision-making tools. The platform will allow analysis, modeling, and forecasting in the health product supply chain so that unexpected changes such as supply disruptions or epidemics can be accommodated.

Ricardo Capúcio de Resende of Universidade Federal de Viçosa in Brazil will design and test a new machine to enable women smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to more efficiently and effectively plant seeds. He has designed a new seeder concept using only two rotating parts, which is light, easy to use and maintain, and can simultaneously plant two crops. He will query local manufacturers and users to further develop the design, and then produce prototypes that will be bench- and field-tested for manufacturability and performance. The results will be used to produce the final seeder design, and this design concept could be applied to other agricultural machines.

Our proposal will provide this life-saving treatment to isolated, extremely resource poor people by obviating the need for electricity. This will be achieved by applying recently developed hydrological engineering approaches to extract the pressure differential required for the adsorption process exploited by Oxygen concentrators. This project aims to develop and test an electricity free Oxygen concentrator suitable for a developing world health facility. This represents a major paradigm shift, as to-date the problem has been interpreted as how to supply electricity to an Oxygen concentrator. In comparison with solar and generator based approaches the prototype will require significantly less capital cost and maintenance. Further, construction out of locally available components will empower the community to independently and sustainably access this life-saving treatment.