Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - June 28, 2005
Marilyn Chase, marilyn.chase@wsj.com
The awards, announced yesterday, are part of Grand Challenges in Global Health, a $436.6 million bonanza for medical researchers funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with contributions from the United Kingdom's Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The 43 multiyear grants range from about $700,000 to nearly $20 million and average $10 million each.
Abraham Sonenshein, professor of molecular biology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, wants to package vaccine ingredients inside harmless bacterial spores, and then freeze-dry them into a drink packet -- avoiding the sting of shots and the cost of cold storage. His plan to target diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and rotavirus, which kills many children due to dehydration, drew a $5 million grant.
Dr. Sonenshein said he will freely license any Tufts patents on his vaccines without royalties to manufacturers supplying the developing world. He already is in talks with Serum Institute of India Ltd., a vaccine maker. But his idea also could be adapted for cheap vaccine production by developed countries, he said.
David Baltimore, president of California Institute of Technology and a 1975 Nobel laureate for his work in virology, won a $13.9 million grant for a project to create lifelong immunity not with shots, but with infusions of immune cells that are programmed to fight diseases. His initial target is AIDS, but his plan holds broader potential against a variety of ills.
Tackling the world-wide problem of drug-resistant bacteria and viruses brought in a $2 million grant for Jian-Dong Jiang of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. By targeting parts of human cells attacked by germs, instead of the germs themselves, he hopes the resulting drugs won't prompt the rise of resistant hepatitis B, HIV and tuberculosis.
Paul Yager, professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, wants to make a palm-size device to test blood for diseases and nutritional deficiencies, delivering results in 10 minutes on credit-card-size papers. His team's proposed tool for remote diagnosis won a $15.4 million grant.
NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, a Grand Challenges board member, said the grants complement NIH's mission of "knowledge for knowledge's sake." To be sure, new inventions for global health might find uses in affluent countries, too, Dr. Zerhouni said, adding, "Nothing would please us more than to have hand-held diagnostics to apply to our own health."
While some grants went to luminaries such as Dr. Baltimore, others went to more obscure researchers working on problems of interest to famine-stricken Africa.
Richard T. Sayre of Ohio State University in Columbus has worked for 16 years to genetically engineer cassava -- a bitter staple root with few vitamins and cyanide residues that can kill or inflict nerve damage on people who eat it. Because it grows in harsh climates, some 250 million to 600 million people subsist on it.
Dr. Sayre said the idea "started with a dishwasher in my lab from Nigeria." Offiong Mkpong, a graduate student and lab technician, had grown up eating cassava, and watched it poison villagers and sicken family. "It was his vision to engineer a cassava that had no cyanide content," said Dr. Sayre, who added that he plans to create a super tuber with enhanced nutrients.
"I didn't want my people to die anymore from [cyanide] poisoning," said Dr. Mkpong, who subsequently earned a doctorate in agronomy at Ohio State, and left his cassava work in 1989 for a professor's job at Palm Beach Community College in Florida. He doesn't share in the $7.5 million Gates grant given to Dr. Sayre and the current team of co-workers in five countries.
Dr. Mkpong, who teaches biology, chemistry and botany, said he regrets that his career path diverged from the now-lucrative cassava project, but will be glad "if my people at home benefit. That's why I started it."
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