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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Enhancing the Effectiveness of Vaccines by Targeting to a New Dendritic Cell Molecule

Irina CaminschiThe Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical ResearchVictoria, Victoria, Australia
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Irina Caminschi of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia will test whether a prototype malaria vaccine which targets a newly identified dendritic cell molecule will produce a strong antibody response without the use of adjuvants.

Nanopatch Delivery of DNA-Based Malaria Vaccines to Skin: Precisely Targeting the Skin Immune System for Radically Improved Vaccines

Mark KendallUniversity of QueenslandBrisbane, Queensland, Australia
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Mark Kendall of the University of Queensland in Australia will design and test nanopatches, small patches consisting of microscopic silicon projections coated with a malaria vaccine in dry form, to target immunologically-sensitive cells within the skin's outer layers – that are missed by the needle and syringe – to induce unique and protective immune response against the disease.

Efficacy of L-isoleucine Supplemented Food and Vitamin D in the Treatment of Childhood Pneumonia and Diarrhea in Hospitalized Patients: A Novel Therapeutic Approach

Nur AlamInternational Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, BangladeshDhaka, Bangladesh
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Nur Alam of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh will test whether adding L-isoleucine and Vitamin D to food served to hospitalized children will induce secretion of antimicrobial peptides that can aid recovery from acute diarrhea and pneumonia.

Design and Setting-up of a Bioinformatics Platform Dedicated to HIV Drug Resistance Problems

Ouwe Missi Oukem OdileCentre International De Reference Chantal BiyaYaounde, Cameroon
Grand Challenges Explorations
Drug Resistance
1 Oct 2008

Odile Ouwe Missi Oukem of Cameroon's Centre International de Reference Chantal Biya will set up a suite of computer tools to manage and analyze biological, clinical and epidemiological data collected from African HIV-infected patients to better study HIV resistance to antiretroviral drugs.

A Novel Structure-Based Model for the Prediction and Exploitation of Resistance Mutations

Ryan LilienUniversity of TorontoToronto, Ontario, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Drug Resistance
1 Oct 2008

Dr. Ryan Lilien of the University of Toronto in Canada will work to computationally model the structural and functional effects of point mutations on a target protein's active site. With the development of predictive models of pathogen evolution and the spread of resistance, this information can be used to guide drug development and optimization.

Arctic Essential Genes Used to Create Temperature Sensitive Pathogens

Francis NanoUniversity of VictoriaVictoria, British Columbia, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Francis Nano of Canada's University of Victoria will introduce essential genes found in Arctic bacteria into the genomes of “warm-loving” pathogens, making them unable to grow at core body temperatures. Such microbes could survive on human skin, which is cold enough to allow for replication and the stimulation of a strong immune system response, but not survive further dissemination into deeper and warmer tissue.

Testing of a Therapeutic PolyBAIT Concept for In Vivo Protection Against Cholera Toxin

Sanah JowhariTheraCarb IncCalgary, Alberta, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Ms. Sanah Jowhari at TheraCarb, a biotechnology company in Canada, will apply polymer-based drug technology to capture and remove the Cholera toxin from the body of a host, and validate an approach to developing a viable drug candidate for Cholera.

Novel Ways of Inducing Early Life Immunity

Volker GerdtsUniversity of SaskatchewanSaskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Volker Gerdts of Canada's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization proposes to use live viral vectors to immunize fetuses during pregnancy to induce immune responses in the unborn baby, thereby protecting the infant against early life infections.

Development of Methods to Induce or Improve Immune Responses Directed Against Cryptic Microbial Antigens

Hugo SoudeynsCentre de recherche du CHU Sainte-JustineMontreal, Quebec, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Infectious Diseases
1 Oct 2008

Hugo Soudeyns of Canada's Centre de Recherche du CHU Sainte-Justine will incorporate engineered frameshifting gene cassettes into vaccine vectors in hopes of eliciting broader T helper and cytotoxic T cell response, leading to better protection against disease.

Preventing HIV-1 Infection Using a Simian CCR5 Mutant as a Vaccine Immunogen

Zhiwei ChenUniversity of Hong KongHong Kong, China
Grand Challenges Explorations
HIV Infection
1 Oct 2008

In pursuit of a new type of AIDS vaccine, Zhiwei Chen of the University of Hong Kong will work to use a variant of the primate CCR5 gene as an antigen and test its efficacy in inducing cross-neutralizing antibodies against this important HIV co-receptor.

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