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For Release: May 19, 2009
Contact: dms.communications@dartmouth.edu, 603-650-1492

Gates Foundation Awards DMS Scientists for Bold Global Health Ideas

Hanover, N.H.—Dartmouth Medical School scientists are among nearly 200 researchers from around the world who have been awarded grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their bold ideas to improve health in developing countries. They have won grants of $100,000 from the Foundation's Grand Challenges Explorations initiative that aims to foster creative ideas that could change the face of global health.

The team of Drs. John Fahey and Charles Wira received funding for a project to prevent HIV infection by naturally occurring antivirals, part of the new round of grants announced in May. Dr. George O'Toole was awarded support to create drugs and delivery systems to limit drug resistance in the first round of funding, when Grand Challenges Explorations was launched in October 2008.

The grant program is a five-year $100 million initiative to promote innovation in global health. It is part of the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge in Global Health effort to encourage scientists worldwide to expand the pipeline of approaches for breakthroughs in global health, according to the Foundation.

Creative ideas that could change the
face of global health

Fahey, research assistant professor of physiology, and Wira, professor of physiology, seek to harness a woman's immune system to prevent HIV-1 infection. They plan to identify selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), similar to those used for treating breast cancer and osteoporosis, that induce local immune protection in the reproductive tract against HIV without enhancing the factors that promote infection.

O'Toole, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, and Dr. Mark Grinstaff, a biomedical engineer and chemist at Boston University, will work to develop a flexible nanoparticle packed with high concentrations of antibiotics, which would expand and release its content when internalized by host cells. More precise delivery of high concentrations of antimicrobial agents, in single or combination therapies, they hope, will reduce the development of resistance.

-DMS-

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