Apostolos Alissandratos of the Australian National University in Australia will develop a biotechnology platform for the low-cost production of simple, just-add-water diagnostic tests for the early detection of infectious diseases in resource-limited settings. Diagnosis of infectious diseases generally involves detecting pathogen-specific nucleic acids in human samples, which requires unstable reagents, costly procedures, and skilled workers. They have engineered a safe bacterium that produces the biochemical reagents needed to detect the pathogenic nucleic acids as an extract. They will develop a method to freeze-dry this extract so that it is stable at room temperature, simplifying production and storage, and a protocol for incorporating it into a reaction mixture that only requires the addition of water to an individual tube for a diagnostic polymerase chain reaction. They aim to reduce the cost per test by at least 100-fold, and will evaluate their approach for detecting a malaria-causing pathogen.

Bernard Appiah of Texas A&M School of Public Health in the U.S. will produce a one-hour community radio program to be aired twice per week comprising a 10-minute radio drama serial on infant vaccines, a 10-minute panel discussion by community health workers, and a 30-minute phone-in by listeners, to improve on-time childhood vaccinations in Ethiopia. In 2016, on-time and full immunization coverage in Ethiopia was only achieved for 39% of children between one and two years of age, despite long-term efforts to improve it. One of the main reasons for this was lack of communication with mothers about immunizations. To address this, they will harness the popularity of community radio in Ethiopia. They will engage mothers, community health workers, and radio actors to help design a radio drama incorporating relevant topics on childhood immunizations, and train 20 health workers to be part of radio panel discussions. They will air the radio program for six months in two districts, and determine its impact on timely immunization coverage in a selected cohort of mothers with infants.

Kelly Johnston and others from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom will develop a cell line from a parasitic filarial nematode worm that can proliferate continuously in vitro to enable high-throughput screening of candidate anti-filarial drugs. Current drug screening efforts are limited by the complex life cycle of the worms and the difficulties of obtaining sufficient numbers of worms. They will isolate worm cells from various life cycle stages and use a high-content screening approach to monitor thousands of cells cultured under different conditions to increase the probability of detecting a stably growing cell line. Once one or more stable cell lines have been produced, they will establish optimal culture conditions for drug screening assays.

Menale Kassie of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya along with Ram Fishman and Opher Mendelsohn from Tel Aviv University in Israel will take a community-based crowdsourcing approach to crop protection of smallholder farms in low-resource settings by developing a simple software platform for basic feature phones to monitor pest incidence. Human-based monitoring of crops is the most accurate way to identify pests, but there are too few public monitoring agents in low-resource settings, leaving the majority of farms unprotected. Engaging the smallholder farmers to monitor their own crops is a promising solution, but most of them lack sophisticated equipment like smart phones and have low technical knowledge, so simpler solutions are needed. Therefore, they will adapt commercially-available software that collates and analyzes pest incidence data for basic feature phones and, together with smallholder farmers, design simple interfaces for SMS communication. They will test their approach by performing a pilot study to monitor wheat and maize, covering one to two counties in Kenya, and teach smallholder farmers and government agents how to use the monitoring system and compare the data with that collected by expert field agents.

Saurabh Agarwal of Deeper Learning Innovations Private Limited in India will build an interactive, digital teaching platform using advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence algorithms to enable teachers across the globe to more effectively teach life skills to every child. Teaching standards in developing countries suffer from limited access to quality content, restricted teaching methods for teachers, and a lack of ways to transfer knowledge and skills to other teachers and parents. Life skills such as problem solving and communication that are needed to address 21^st century challenges such as health, wellness, and gender equality are far better learned by experience and reflection, rather than reading and lectures. They will build the platform and incorporate life skills modules designed by learning experts and teachers containing multi-lingual and contextualized content for global access, a teacher's discussion forum, and a module designed by teachers to help parents support their child's education. The goal is to make the platform freely available and accessible to all teachers across the globe.

Ricardo Capúcio de Resende of Universidade Federal de Viçosa in Brazil will design and test a new machine to enable women smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to more efficiently and effectively plant seeds. He has designed a new seeder concept using only two rotating parts, which is light, easy to use and maintain, and can simultaneously plant two crops. He will query local manufacturers and users to further develop the design, and then produce prototypes that will be bench- and field-tested for manufacturability and performance. The results will be used to produce the final seeder design, and this design concept could be applied to other agricultural machines.

Our proposal will provide this life-saving treatment to isolated, extremely resource poor people by obviating the need for electricity. This will be achieved by applying recently developed hydrological engineering approaches to extract the pressure differential required for the adsorption process exploited by Oxygen concentrators. This project aims to develop and test an electricity free Oxygen concentrator suitable for a developing world health facility. This represents a major paradigm shift, as to-date the problem has been interpreted as how to supply electricity to an Oxygen concentrator. In comparison with solar and generator based approaches the prototype will require significantly less capital cost and maintenance. Further, construction out of locally available components will empower the community to independently and sustainably access this life-saving treatment.

Philip J. Shaw of Thailand's National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology will seek to identify potential drug targets and vaccine antigens in the malaria parasite using a novel technology to reduce specific gene expression. By fusing a natural genetic “riboswitch” onto gene targets, the team will attempt to attenuate gene expression and thereby determine gene function.

David Sokal of Family Health International in the U.S., with colleagues at Cambridge and Drexel Universities, will develop and test low-cost filters coated with safe microbicides that can be inserted into tips of nipple shields to prevent HIV transmission during breastfeeding.

Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is the leading cause of maternal mortality in low-income countries. The majority of these deaths occur outside the health care system, and so an intervention that could be used in any setting and with minimal training could save lives. We will use an animal model to demonstrate appropriate uterine fill, and a proof-of-concept study to show stoppage of post-delivery bleeding and test ease of removal. Standard care for treating PPH consists of massage, uterotonics, and tamponade (i.e., "holding pressure"). Devices used to treat PPH via tamponade are not easily adaptable to low-resource settings with diverse climates and providers. A novel agent, the XSTAT mini sponge dressing, has proven successful in the acute cessation of traumatic non-compressible bleeding analogous to PPH. This device utilizes pre-packaged, environmentally stable, compressed medical sponges soaked with a hemostatic agent and administered by a light-weight applicator. The sponges, once deployed, exert uniform pressure to address multiple sources of bleeding and are easily removable.

Anders Hakansson of the University of Buffalo in the U.S. has identified a protein from human breast milk (Human Alpha Lactalbumin Made Lethal to Tumor cell, or HAMLET), that kills respiratory tract bacteria. Hakansson will attempt to understand the mechanism by which HAMLET binds to and kills pheumococci without the bacteria developing resistance.

Because Leishmania is transmitted to humans when sand flies feed on humans, Jesus Valenzuela of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. proposes to develop a novel vaccine against salivary proteins of sand flies with the aim to induce a strong immune response against the parasite.

To optimize the effectiveness of current anti-tuberculosis drugs, Boitumelo Semete of the CSIR in South Africa will work with collaborators to develop “sticky nanoparticles” that specifically attach to TB-infected cells. Once taken in by these cells, the nanoparticles will slowly degrade, releasing the anti-TB drugs and killing the bacteria. With this novel drug delivery system, the team aims to improve the bioavailability of the current therapies, with the possibility of shortening the treatment period for TB as well as reduce drug side effects.

Joao Guilherme Bezerra Alves from the Instituto de Medicina Integral Professor Fernando Figueira in Brazil will perform a randomized controlled trial to assess whether a daily oral supplement of magnesium citrate can prevent placental vascular disease, which can lead to preterm birth. Placental vascular disease restricts the flow of nutrients to the fetus and can cause growth restriction and maternal hypertensive disorders. Magnesium is known to promote placental vascular flow, and magnesium citrate is safe, inexpensive and easily absorbed in the body. They will perform a clinical trial in two large hospitals in Brazil in which 3,000 pregnant women will be offered a daily magnesium supplement or a placebo control starting from up to 20 weeks of gestation and continuing until birth. The effect on various outcomes including placental function, preterm labor, and mother and child health will be evaluated.

Feng Qian of Tsinghua University in China will work to develop an inhaled drug particle using a scalable formulation process to deliver tuberculosis drugs directly into the lungs. They will develop micro-particles containing current TB drugs and will test their utility when inhaled.

Yingjie Lu and Richard Malley of Children's Hospital Boston in the U.S. will develop a bivalent pneumococcal and typhoid vaccine by using a new technology to include three highly conserved pneumococcal antigens and the well-established Vi polysaccharide antigen that provides protection against typhoid fever. The team will test the ability of this vaccine to induce strong humoral and cellular immune responses against both pneumococcus and the causative agent of typhoid fever, Salmonella Typhi. In this project’s Phase I research, the team successfully developed the bivalent vaccine and in initial research was able to demonstrate dual immunity to both pneumococcus and S. Typhi. In Phase II, they will perform further proof-of-concept experiments in animal models that will provide support for the clinical development of this bivalent vaccine candidate.

Warwick Grant of La Trobe University in Australia will develop a small animal parasite model to test candidate drugs for treating the parasitic nematode Onchocerca volvulus, which causes river blindness in humans. They will establish infection of the related parasite Cercopithifilaria johnstoni in rats and evaluate the pathology for similarity to the human disease. The model will then be validated for testing human anti-onchocercal drug candidates by analyzing the effect of drugs with proven success in patients. Once the model has been fully validated, they aim to perform routine assessments of candidate drugs.

Antibodies and the complement system work together to specifically detect and clear viruses, but they are circumvented by HIV, which hides itself and the cells it infects by hijacking host proteins such as CD59. Qigui Yu of Indiana University School of Medicine in U.S. will attempt to unmask HIV and HIV-infected cells and render them susceptible to antibody-complement attack. In this project's Phase I research, Yu and his team identified a potent, specific, and non-toxic inhibitor of human CD59, which is used by HIV to escape destruction by antibody-complement attack. In Phase II, Yu will continue to research how this inhibitor might allow antibodies to regain their complement-mediated activity to destroy the virus and HIV-infected cells, and will also research how HIV-1 incorporates human CD59 onto viral particles to escape antibody-complement immunity.

Hans Brunner of Value Spring Technology, Inc. in the U.S. will build and test an artificial intelligence (AI) tutor to teach the scientific method and critical thinking skills to individual students at their pace and level. All children learn differently but one-on-one lessons are often prohibitively expensive or unavailable. To address this, in collaboration with two non-profit teaching institutions, they will adapt their AI software for education, and build and train an AI tutor, Ali. Ali will be designed to produce natural sounding language to engage students in conversation involving open-ended questions and answers that stimulate critical thinking, which is based on the Socratic method. Students will be taught at their own pace and level of understanding, and Ali will be built to ensure each topic is fully understood before starting the next. They will engage teachers to test and critique their AI tutor approach and to evaluate its teaching performance.

Manish Bhardwaj of Innovators in Health in India will build a social networking platform consisting of voice messages accessed via mobile phone that is monitored by community health workers to connect small groups of young pregnant women and new mothers in India. Currently, community health workers provide home visits to help adolescent mothers combat mental health disorders. However, their capacity is limited. An additional difficulty for adolescent mothers is the lack of social networks caused by moving to new neighborhoods to live with their husbands. Social networks can protect against mental health disorders by providing peer support and the relevant knowledge and experience to overcome any challenges. They will trial their approach in a rural area in India and recruit young mothers with no access to mental health care into specified social groups. Each group will be associated with trained community health workers who provide additional support to the mothers, and manage the messages and posts.

Ross Boyce at the University of North Carolina in the U.S. will develop an approach that uses new methods of mapping households together with available health data to better identify places that have limited access to healthcare to improve immunization coverage. Many sub-Saharan African countries have very poor rates of childhood vaccination coverage. Improving coverage requires identifying those households and areas with poor access to healthcare, but this is challenging with the limited data available. To more accurately measure healthcare access and thereby immunization coverage, they will perform a six-month study in a rural sub-county of western Uganda. By providing user-friendly tools to health workers and providers, they will generate more accurate household maps and assess three different metrics of healthcare access using freely available software and a Bayesian statistical framework. They will evaluate the accuracy of their approach for predicting coverage by conducting a cross-sectional survey to determine the vaccination status of all children aged between 12 and 23 months in the sub-county.

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.

Pierluigi Bonello of Ohio State University in the U.S. will develop a surveillance system for crops using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to position sensors to help diagnose plant diseases in low-income countries. Plant diseases are usually identified first by the farmers or human scouts and then confirmed by laboratory testing. This process is inefficient and requires resources often unavailable in low-income countries, calling for alternative approaches. It is known that when a plant becomes infected, it produces specific chemicals. In addition, functional chemical groups in biological samples are known to vibrate in predictable ways after absorbing light. They will test whether this information can be exploited for the rapid and widespread detection of two plant diseases, rice blast and maize dwarf mosaic, by vibrational spectroscopy that could be positioned inside crop canopies by drones. Rice and maize grown in greenhouses and fields in the U.S. will be infected, and they will develop statistical methods to evaluate whether handheld spectrometers can distinguish between infected and uninfected plants. This technology could ultimately allow crop managers to control the spread of a disease even before plants show visual symptoms.

Paul Dyson of Swansea University in the United Kingdom will work to control the incidence of sleeping sickness in humans, which is caused by the Trypanosome parasite transmitted by tsetse flies, by genetically modifying a fly gut bacterium to deliver double-stranded (ds) RNAs to block two important parasite proteins. Trypanosomes mature in the flies, thereby gaining the capacity to infect mammals. He will engineer the bacteria and introduce them into tsetse flies, then test the capacity of the dsRNAs to inhibit their target proteins in trypanosomes. This approach could lead to long-term control of this disease as the bacteria are maternally transmitted to the offspring.

Mosquito transmitted pathogens such as dengue and malaria are a significant disease burden on the world's population. Paul Young of the University of Queensland in Australia aims to develop a novel vaccine approach that is based on blocking mosquito transmission of these disease agents rather than inducing pathogen- specific immunity.

The idea is to develop an artificial intelligence model capable of simultaneously analyzing data from the Laboratory Information System and from the Hospital Information System. This technology aims to enable the delivery to hospital physicians of a ranked list of antimicrobials that are more suitable to treat infection by multi-resistant microorganism with a focus on newborn and young children.

Michael Leibowitz of the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in the U.S. will investigate whether malaria parasites bind to, invade and replicate in the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels to test the theory that endothelial cells play an important role in the development of malaria infection and may serve as undiscovered reservoirs for parasite latency.

Steven Maranz of Weill Medical College in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that providing children high levels of flavanols, compounds found in chocolate, green tea, cola and shea nuts, deprives malaria parasites of lipids needed to survive, keeping parasite infection at levels low enough to elicit a strong immune response that builds lifelong immunity.

Carmine Bozzi of Akeso Associates in the U.S., along with Maurice Masoda of Heal Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will test the effect of treating hookworm infections in women smallholder farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo on disease prevalence, iron status, and capacity for labor over a 12-month period. Hookworm infections are endemic in many regions, and infection rates can reach 50% of the population. Hookworms reside in the intestinal wall where they mediate blood loss causing iron deficiency and anemia, which is exacerbated in women due to menstrual blood loss and iron demands during pregnancy. This anemia in turn leads to reduced aerobic work capacity, therefore successful treatment of these infections could result in significant gains in labor productivity.

Edward Mitre and colleagues at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine in the U.S. will develop a short course therapy for clearing adult filarial worms, which cause substantial morbidity and mortality, to enhance eradication efforts. Current antifilarial medications target only larval forms of the worms, requiring repeated administration until the natural death of the adults. Filarial infections are known to induce immune cells to release histamine, which can regulate the immune response. Using mouse models of filarial infections, they will evaluate whether a short course of standard antifilarial treatment combined with an antihistamine can clear adult worms and thereby more quickly cure the disease.

The project will study the genetic material from environmental samples from humans (healthy and ill), cattle and their meat to estimate the proportion of E. coli and K. pneumoniae in the microbiome. The main objective is to better understand the distribution of bacteria and its resistance genes, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria and extended spectrum beta-lactamase (EsβL) and carbapenemases encoding genes in distinct ecological sources.

Agnes Ronan, from Pediatric Adolescent Treatment Africa, in South Africa will develop a training and supervision tool for young health workers that combines screening and support in an accessible format to reduce depression in HIV-positive, adolescent mothers. There are an estimated two million adolescent mothers living with HIV in Africa, and stigma prevents many of them accessing health care. Young HIV-positive peer supporters work in local clinics and use informal chats, text messages, and home visits to support HIV-positive adolescents. However, they lack the skills to support the mental health of HIV-positive adolescent mothers. They will adapt existing cognitive behavioral therapy methods based on the WHO's Thinking Healthy program, and co-develop their approach with adolescent mothers, peer supporters, and developers. They will train 70 peer supporters from six southern African countries and each will recruit three HIV-positive adolescent mothers to test the approach.

Renato Soibelmann Procianoy from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil will analyze the association between bacterial populations in the vagina and gut of mothers in their third trimester and in the meconium of very preterm newborns, with risk of preterm delivery. It was previously assumed that microbes from the mother are first transferred to the fetus during delivery. However, it was recently shown that this could happen already in the uterus, triggering a possible immune response by the fetus that may lead to premature birth, which is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality. They will use 16S rRNA-based bacterial sequencing technology on around 600 samples to compare the types of bacteria present in preterm infants with that in healthy term infants in a neonatal unit in the Clinicas Hospital in Porto Alegre. They will also track the changes in bacterial composition in healthy and sick newborns during their hospital stay, to identify types of bacteria associated with specific diseases such as diarrhea. All samples will be stored in a repository for future case-controlled studies.

Augmented infant resuscitator: transitioning a novel behavior change innovation to drive newborn ventilation enhancement to improve newborn health outcomes at birth

Christoph Nann, Alex Schill, Maik Kaehler and a team from Serviceplan in Germany will test a simple and modern method for generating donations to developing countries. They will use location-based network applications such as Foursquare, which has over 25 million users who record their locations in cafés, shops and restaurants. By setting up collaborations with local retail partners in Germany, they will label their stores on Foursquare with charity projects in developing countries, such as building water pumps, to promote visitors to the stores. Once an organization has been found that can handle the donations, they will launch the locations on a website. When a Foursquare user visits one of the project-labeled stores it will trigger an automatic donation of an agreed amount from the store to that project. The aim is to spread the approach to other cities.

David A. Spiegel of Yale University in the U.S. will pursue an antibiotic strategy called “biosynthetic immunotargeting.” Streptococcus pneumoniae will be fed small molecules which they will incorporate into their cell walls. These small molecules contain an epitope recognized by antibodies in the human bloodstream, leading to immune clearance independent of bacterial antigens, representing a unique, resistance-free approach to pneumococcal disease.

Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu of the Smallholders Foundation in Nigeria will improve his Box-in-a-Truck design for extending the lifespan of cassava, which is a major staple food grown by women smallholder farmers, to decrease labor costs associated with cassava processing. Cassava spoils within 24 hours of harvesting, and the traditional method of prolonging life by leaving the crops longer in the ground reduces the nutritional content. He has designed a small, manually transportable truck containing a wire box that is surrounded by moist sawdust and can hold 145 pieces of cassava. This Box in a Truck is inexpensive and can be locally manufactured and maintained. Initial tests showed that cassava stored in this way lasted the duration of the 16 day study period and retained more nutrients than when it is left in the ground. He will test extended time spans and optimize parameters for use, and then field-test the device for its capacity to save labor and its suitability for local conditions across different seasons using 200 women smallholder farmers.

Gadi Borkow of Cupron, Inc. in the U.S. will study the efficacy of using newly developed copper-oxide based filters that deactivate a wide range of viruses, including HIV-1, as a shield to enable HIV-infected mothers to breastfeed their infants without risking transmission of the virus.

Yen Verhoeven of the Paragon Learning Research Group in the U.S. will create a digital platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs) and a supportive online community of professionals for kindergarten to sixth grade teachers to transform their teaching practices and bring STEM and 21^st century skills to their schools. MOOCs were developed as a means to provide free education to everyone. However, their content is typically restricted to videos and reading with little interactive learning, which is inadequate for teaching life skills such as critical thinking and creativity. And encouraging teachers to adopt new teaching practices requires additional professional support from peers and mentors. To address these issues, they will work with teachers and teaching experts to formulate a new MOOC design containing a variety of instructional resources and free professional development classes and develop a beta version of the online community platform. They will evaluate the course by teaching it to local K-6 teachers and gathering feedback to refine the content.

Jhpiego proposes a capacity building and sustaining "Day of Birth" approach to bring lifesaving services to remote health facilities where complications must be prevented and managed simultaneously and swiftly, often by a single provider. This approach uses evidence-based practices in prevention and treatment of the two biggest killers of women and newborns in the hours after birth -PPH and neonatal asphyxia. Our approach will increase the knowledge and skills of frontline health workers, and therefore reduce newborn mortality and PPH in the areas where the intervention is applied through: 1) capacity building of facility teams through targeted training in "Helping Babies Breathe" and "Bleeding After Birth," 2) use of a low-cost, easy to use and durable simulator during training and low-dose high-frequency routine practice sessions carried out at the facilities after training, 3) further reinforcement through supportive supervision via phone and text messages, and 4) awareness creation within the community of improved services at the health facilities to boost desire for facility birth.

Kaveh Ashrafi of the University of California, San Francisco in the U.S. will use the free-living model nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a molecular platform to identify new drugs capable of killing adult filarial parasitic worms, which cause serious infections. C. elegans is a non-parasitic model organism that can be easily grown and manipulated in the lab, unlike related parasitic Roundworms. Ashrafi will genetically engineer C. elegans to carry the parasitic version of the gene encoding phosphodiesterase-4, inhibition of which is known to kill the parasites. This mutant, as well as one carrying the human version of the same gene, will be used in screens to identify drug candidates that can selectively kill adult parasites.

To better understand the role that antimicrobial peptides play in the immune system, Gregory Tew of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the U.S. will test synthetic molecules that mimic these peptides for their ability to clear bacteria by engaging the innate and adaptive immune system.

Tatiana Salisbury of King's College London in the United Kingdom along with colleagues at the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom and the Manhiça Health Research Centre in Mozambique will develop a strategy to improve the mental health of young mothers in Mozambique by adapting existing technology-based and group-based methods to teach them life skills such as parenting and social skills. Almost half of Mozambican girls have had a baby by the time they are 18 years old. Together with associated events including being excluded from school and family conflicts, this can damage their mental health and lead to suicide. They will recruit experts in mental and maternal health and implementation science, analyze resources and local infrastructure, and, together with young mothers, their families, and other stakeholders, co-develop the skill-strengthening and delivery methods. Delivery methods to be analyzed include text messaging, mobile phone applications, and group meetings. They will then pilot test their strategy with three different delivery methods using up to 60 pregnant and young mothers (aged 15-24 years) over four months, and evaluate their effect on mental health.

Daniel Fletcher of the University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. will develop a microscope that attaches to cell phones to capture high-contrast fluorescent images of malaria parasites. Custom software on the phone will automatically count the parasite load, with results and patient information wirelessly transmitted to clinical centers for tracking.

Richard Komuniecki of The University of Toledo in the U.S. will develop a high-throughput screening platform to identify novel drug targets for treating parasitic nematode (worm) infections, which cause significant morbidity in developing countries. Current drugs are ineffective against some parasitic species, and other species are becoming resistant, thus there is an urgent need for alternative approaches. However, high-throughput drug screens have been challenging because most parasitic nematodes cannot be cultured in the laboratory. To bypass this, they will create chimeric nematodes by introducing key neuronal drug targets from parasitic nematodes into the free-living model nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. This adapted model will then be used to develop a screening assay for identifying compounds with anti-parasitic activity. This approach could also be applied to any other existing or proposed drug targets.

To test the theory that certain metabolic pathways essential to the survival of bacteria are immutable and therefore promising targets of drug therapy, Krishna Kodukula and colleagues at SRI International in the U.S. will identify peptides that bind key metabolites of M. tuberculosis, and test their ability to kill the bacteria.

Urgent shortages of medicines in low-income countries lead to millions of unnecessary deaths at birth every year. One pervasive challenge causing such shortages is how to move the right commodities to the right place on time and at cost. We propose to develop an open-source distribution management system which leverages our existing real-time dataset of stock transactions at thousands of facilities in Africa to drive automated improvements in practice. Specifically, we will make optimal usage of limited resources to improve route planning and scheduling, respond to delivery or cold chain failures, strengthen communication, and reduce inappropriate resource utilization. These tools could save governments hundreds of thousands in the cost of fuel, trucks, drivers, and wasted/lost stock, while also improving reliable access to better quality, life-saving commodities.

Owens Wiwa of the Clinton Health Access Initiative in the U.S. will determine whether providing free vouchers for mothers to receive a nutrient-dense food can help infants with moderate acute malnutrition in Nigeria. By linking the vouchers to attendance at immunization clinics, they also hope to boost immunization coverage. Malnutrition is a major public health concern in Nigeria, where almost one third of children are underweight, and ten percent are wasted. However, improving nutrition in poor and rural households is difficult because of a lack of education and limited access to nutritional foods. They will pilot test their approach in a randomized controlled trial at two locations by training healthcare workers at immunization centers to council mothers on feeding practices and to monitor infant growth to identify malnutrition. The mothers of malnourished infants between six and 23 months old will be provided with vouchers to receive three months' worth of an existing fortified food, which will be provided at a local health facility. They will evaluate the effect of their approach on the infants' nutritional status and immunization coverage.

Sailendra Appanah of EnerGaia Bangladesh Ltd in Bangladesh will teach low-income women in rural Bangladesh to farm Spirulina, which is an edible protein- and nutrient-rich microalgae, to provide better nutrition and an income for them and their families. They have developed a low-cost Spirulina production system comprising closed tanks with filtered air and water inputs, and a business model that provides the farmers with a lease-to-own financing solution and guaranteed buyers of excess product. They will recruit 30 interested women from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and pay them a small wage to undergo three months of training at their local Spirulina farm. They will then provide them with tanks through the lease-to-own program, help them with installation and operation, and process the fresh spirulina produce for sale or for local consumption. They will evaluate the effect of their approach on income and malnutrition in the community.