Jacob Godfrey Agea of Makerere University in Uganda proposes to breed Nsenene grasshoppers (Ruspolia Nitidula), which are a rich source of protein, and grind or mill them for use as a flour or additive in other foods such as cereals and grains. These insects could provide a unique source of nutrition for infants and children under the age of five in Eastern Africa.

Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in the U.S. proposes to engineer bacterial viruses to deliver enzymes that can be designed to degrade the genome of pathogenic bacteria. These bacteriophages could be used as a new platform for treating drug-resistant bacterial infections.

R. Paul Johnson of Emory University in the U.S. is using single-cell transcriptional profiling to identify unique biomarkers expressed in CD4+ T cells latently infected with HIV or the simian equivalent SIV. Latent infection of long-lived cells enables the viruses to survive current drug treatments, and makes the disease very difficult to cure. In Phase I, while working at Harvard Medical School in the U.S., they developed a robust high-throughput technique to identify viral genes expressed in single cells and tested it on SIV-infected macaques. In Phase II, they will use their approach to identify biomarkers on clinically relevant latently infected cell populations, which they will isolate from SIV-infected macaques treated with newly-developed antiretroviral regimens. These biomarkers could be used to design therapeutics that selectively target latently-infected cells to fully eradicate the virus.

Steven Maranz of David H. Murdock Research Institute in the U.S. proposes to address vitamin A deficiency by using probiotics that biosynthesize carotenoids. Delivered in yogurt, the beneficial microbes will subsequently colonize the digestive tract, where they will manufacture the raw material for the body to convert to vitamin A.

Mary Ann Lila and colleagues at North Carolina University in the U.S. will partner with the University of Zambia to test a new technology that concentrates phytonutrients from locally grown fruits and vegetables into a protein-rich food matrix. The resulting product could provide a low-cost highly stable year-round source of vital nutrients for mothers, infants and children in African communities.

Rinti Banerjee of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in India will develop lipid-based nanoparticles containing iron, folic acid, and iodine and attempt to integrate them into cosmetic pastes such as mehendi or kohl that are commonly used by rural women in developing countries. These cosmetics could be used to transdermally deliver to mothers important micronutrients needed for healthy growth of fetuses.

Minetaro Arita of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Japan will develop a diagnostics platform to detect and characterize poliovirus from a stool sample. A soluble poliovirus receptor and magnetic beads will work together to concentrate the virus in a diagnostic tool and allow for not only detection but also differentiation of strains.

Garry Blakely of the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom will engineer a common gut bacterium to express antigens from pathogens that cause diarrhea onto nanoscale outer membrane vesicles. These nanoparticles could be the basis for a new generation of biocompatible oral vaccines that will protect against diarrheal disease.

Mark Styczynski of the Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S. proposes to create portable, low-cost, bacteria-based genetic circuits to measure blood micronutrient levels without requiring sophisticated instrumentation to perform or read the test. This would provide an inexpensive, rapid method to diagnose nutrition status in the field.

Christian Ockenhouse of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the U.S. and Alan Cowman of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia seek to generate a transgenic P. falciparum malaria parasite that can be used to assess the efficacy of P. vivax-based circumsporozoite vaccines.

Qiang Chen of Arizona State University in the U.S. proposes to engineer edible plants, such as lettuce and rice, to express beneficial proteins found in human milk. The protein bodies in these plants allow for the stable, high accumulation of these human milk proteins, and the plants can either be eaten directly by infants or formulated into baby food to provide essential nutrients and antibacterial benefits.

Ioannis Ieropoulos of the University of the West of England, Bristol in the United Kingdom will test the ability of microbial fuel cells to convert urine and sludge into electrical energy while also purifying water by killing disease-causing pathogens in the waste. This technology could enable energy recovery from urine and other waste streams in developing countries. In Phase I, he provided proof of concept that the technology could be used with urine by testing power performance, clean water output, and pathogen kill rates of different types of microbial fuel cells, as well as identifying ceramic as a promising material for construction. In Phase II, he will ready the technology for implementation in developing countries by further developing the ceramic designs for low-cost mass manufacturing and servicing, and testing their ability to destroy a wide range of pathogens and generate energy for lighting or mobile phone charging. They will also analyze water production quality. The final prototype integrated into a real toilet or urinal will be field tested initially in Durban.