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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Safe, Cost-effective, and Functional Strategy for Immune Intervention

Sunil JoshiUniversity of Oklahoma Health Sciences CenterOklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
2 Apr 2010

Sunil Joshi of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in the U.S. will study the efficacy of delivering a non-invasive low-voltage electric wave pulse in the vicinity of lymphoid tissues to stimulate the activation and maturation of dendritic cells. If successful, this would be a method of boost long-term immunity.

Detecting Pathogenic Microbes by a "Microbial Litmus Strip"

Liaohai ChenRush University Medical CenterChicago, Illinois, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Diagnostics
1 Apr 2010

Liaohai Chen of Rush University Medical Center in the U.S. will develop nanoparticles which react to the presence of pathogenic microbes by releasing encapsulated substances that quickly amplify the binding signals. These nanoparticles can be placed on the tip of a litmus strip as a colorimetric assay to indicate the presence and concentration of pathogens.

Compact Disc Diagnostics for Early Disease Detection

Robert DunnUniversity of Kansas Center for ResearchLawrence, Kansas, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Diagnostics
1 Apr 2010

Robert Dunn and colleagues at the University of Kansas in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic tool for the early detection of disease that employs writable compact discs that can be read in conventional computer disc drives. Microfluidic structures and immobilized antibodies will be fabricated onto small sections of a compact disc, along with enzymes that produce a reflective “silvering” surface upon recognition of target biomarkers. These changes in reflection can be read by any conventional CD drive, allowing for diagnosis using laptops in low resource settings.

Complement-Based Antibiotic Microbeads

Todd SulcheckGeorgia Tech Research CorporationAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
31 Mar 2010

Todd Sulchek of Georgia Tech and David White of the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. will develop and test the ability of a bi-functional microbead to stimulate the innate immune response. On one hemisphere, the microbead will display targeting antibodies that will bind to pathogens, and on the other hemisphere the microbead will feature Fc fragments that activate the complement system and recruit immune cells to destroy the captured pathogen.

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