Rohit Srivastava and Aravind Kumar of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in India will develop a microneedle-based drug delivery system for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). Current treatment involves frequent administration of combinations of toxic drugs, which often leads to non-compliance necessitating further complex treatments. They have designed a photo-thermosensitive nanocarrier based on liposomes that can release the drugs transdermally via microneedles upon exposure to sunlight or LED in a controlled manner, bypassing the need for multiple administrations and reducing toxic side effects. They will fabricate the microneedles, evaluate drug release dynamics using light, and test drug bioavailability in vivo using a small animal model. This grant was selected through India's IKP Knowledge Park and their IKP-GCE program.

Ashish Ganguly and colleagues from the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology in India will make an affordable paper-based diagnostic to quickly and precisely measure plasma gelsolin levels in expectant mothers to help predict premature delivery and postpartum recovery, thereby reducing new mother and child mortality rates. They will determine the value of plasma gelsolin levels for predicting postpartum-related problems using patient sampling and an animal model of preterm birth. They will also develop the diagnostic by identifying a plasma gelsolin binding peptide that will be used to coat an optimized paper strip, along with a cell phone based read-out to enable remote analysis by a centralized unit. This grant was selected through India's IKP Knowledge Park and their IKP-GCE program.