Awarded Grants

Grand Challenges is a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems. Each initiative is an experiment in the use of challenges to focus innovation on making an impact. Individual challenges address some of the same problems, but from differing perspectives.

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An Intergenerational Prebiotic Approach to Establishment of a Healthy Colonic Microbiome in Infants

Balakrishnan RamakrishnaSRM Institutes for Medical ScienceChennai, , India
Grand Challenges India
All Children Thriving
21 Nov 2016

The study intends to develop an inter-generational intervention to ameliorate neonatal gut microbiota. It is based on the hypothesis that consuming prebiotic starches such as high amylose maize starch (HAMS) by mothers during the third trimester of pregnancy will modify their fecal microbiota and will subsequently lead to a beneficial variation in the fecal microbiota of the newborn infant. This will consequently guide favorable intestinal activity, thus enhancing growth, and intellectual competence of the infant in the intermediate and long term.

Creation of a Biorepository and Imaging Data Bank for Accelerating Evidence Generation to Facilitate Children to Thrive

Shinjini BhatnagarTranslational Health Science and Technology InstituteFaridabad, , India
Grand Challenges India
All Children Thriving
7 Mar 2016

The project is aimed at building better bio-banks for long-term storage of bio-specimens. It has been planned to enroll a cohort of pregnant women, who are less than 20 weeks of gestation and follow them until delivery to study their vulnerability to environmental, clinical and biological factors. The study will contribute to our understanding of the association of these various factors with preterm birth (PTB).

Low-cost Salivary Progesterone Testing for Detecting the Risk of Preterm Births in Rural Community Settings of India

Poonam ShivkumarMahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical SciencesWardha, , India
Grand Challenges India
All Children Thriving
28 Sep 2016

The study is aimed at developing a novel, low-cost test for pre-term birth (PTB). The proposal is intended to test and validate the low-cost salivary progesterone as a point-of-care (POC) test for detecting risk of PTBs in rural community settings of India. Offering non-invasive sampling of biological fluid that is easy to collect, the study allows validation of saliva from a large cohort of pregnant women residing in low-resource community settings. It is planned to obtain single saliva sample from each participant and determine its predictive characteristics against gestation at delivery and other obstetrics and neonatal outcomes.

Stress Outcomes on Pregnancy, Fetal Growth and Birth Weight: Development of Methods to Identify Mothers at Risk of Preterm Birth and Intrauterine Growth Restriction Resulting from Maternal Stress

Arindam MaitraNational Institute of Biomedical GenomicsKalyani, , India
Grand Challenges India
All Children Thriving
29 Mar 2016

The study aims to assess the effect of depression on pregnancy and develop biomarkers for adverse pregnancy outcomes. It plans to analyze stress outcomes on pregnancy, fetal growth and birth weight. The overall aim of the study is to determine stress biomarkers for early detection of mothers at risk of preterm birth and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and to develop interventions to reduce stress and reduce adverse birth outcomes.

The Simple Absolute Neutrophil Count as a Measure of Mucosal Inflammation and as a Predictor of Linear Growth in Indian Infants

Uma NatchuTranslational Health Science and Technology InstituteFaridabad, , India
Grand Challenges India
All Children Thriving
14 Mar 2016

The proposal attempts to address the lack of a simple, low-cost, prospective biomarker for future short stature or stunting. It aims to validate the use of absolute neutrophil count as a predictor/biomarker for stunting in infants. It has been hypothesized that infants in settings with poor sanitation conditions and associated abnormal inflammation of the gut from infections subsequently have poor absorptions of nutrients and loss of supplements which eventually leads to stunting. Neutrophils are drawn to these sites of microbial colonization or are exhausted during the clearing of microbes from circulation. The study tries to establish the low absolute neutrophil count as a measure of mucosal inflammation and as predictor of linear growth in Indian infants.

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