Jeffrey Stringer of the University of North Carolina Global Women’s Health group in the U.S. will oversee a team of Zambian and U.S. researchers in a prospective cohort study of 2,000 pregnant women over a three-year period in Lusaka, Zambia. The study will assess gestational age by early ultrasound and collect data and specimens throughout pregnancy and at delivery with standardized systems to document complications of pregnancy and assessment of birth outcomes. Data and specimens will be used to evaluate the causes of preterm birth and investigate novel strategies for prevention.

Léger Foyet of Population Services International in the U.S. along with the Organization to Advance Solutions in the Sahel (OASIS) and the High Commission of the Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens agriculture initiative (HC3N) will improve gender equity, nutrition, and access to family planning in Niger. Niger has one of the highest levels of poverty and malnutrition. Women in Niger are usually married before the age of 16 and have on average around eight children. Men generally make the decisions on family planning, and there is limited access to contraceptives and healthcare. Non-governmental organizations have supported over 3,000 community gardens across Niger that use solar-powered drip irrigation for growing basic crops like beans. The gardens are tended daily by women, providing an opportunity to address gender inequality in a safe and supportive space. They will select up to 20 gardens to develop and test a package of successful interventions targeting both women and men including reproductive health counseling, identifying gender-based barriers to family planning, and engaging religious leaders to help overturn deep-seated social norms.

Pamela Schnupf of Paris Descartes University in France will develop an oral vaccine to prevent infectious diarrhea in children by engineering a non-pathogenic bacteria to express pathogen molecules that can be safely delivered in bacterial spores. Diarrheal disease caused largely by Shigella and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children under five years of age in low-resource settings. Segmented filamentous bacterium (SFB) is non-pathogenic and normally colonizes the human gut during infancy and stimulates the immune system to protect against infections. They will establish methods to genetically engineer SFB to express selected antigens from enterotoxigenic E.coli and test whether it can stimulate an immune response and protect against infection using established mouse models.

Stephen Lye at Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada and his team will initiate a pilot study that will use a systems biology analysis of genomic, proteomic and plasma markers to identify novel pathways and biomarkers to preterm birth, as well as define the risk of preterm birth in pregnant women. Previous efforts to identify pathways or biomarkers associated with preterm birth have focused on single methodological approaches. With new capabilities in computational analyses, it is now possible to integrate information from multiple analytic techniques – collectively known as systems biology – to derive informative pathways and potential diagnostic biomarkers.