Multi-million pound Grand Challenge grants to tackle TB and malaria in the developing world

UK scientists are to help tackle TB and malaria in the developing world through their leadership of two major international research projects.

Announced today, two research teams from Imperial College London have received grants totalling $28.8 million (approximately £15 million) from the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, a programme of research sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Professor Douglas Young, Department of Infectious Diseases, has received a grant worth $20 million (approximately £11million) to develop drugs for the treatment of latent TB, a condition affecting around one third of the world population, with up to ten percent risk of progress to active disease. TB is responsible for up to 2 million deaths worldwide. The risk of progression from latent to active TB is strongly increased in individuals who are coinfected with HIV.

Dr Austin Burt, Department of Biological Sciences, has received a grant worth $8.8 (approximately £4.8 million) million to develop genetic strategies to block the spread of malaria by mosquitoes.

Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College London said: "TB and malaria are both major causes of ill health and mortality in the developing world. These high profile grants from the Grand Challenges in Global Health programme recognise how research at Imperial can make a real difference to the world by helping to alleviate the suffering caused by these diseases."

Professor Young will lead an international consortium of researchers from Korea, Singapore, the United States and Mexico. They will focus on developing drugs effective in treatment of latent TB and also in shortening treatment times for active TB and helping to tackle drug resistant forms of the disease.

Dr Burt's work, in conjunction with University of Cambridge, University of Washington, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, will develop genetic strategies to block the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes by adapting a class of genes to spread through mosquito populations, either depleting the populations or making them unable to transmit malaria.

The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, a major effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs against diseases that kill millions of people each year in the world's poorest countries, has offered 43 grants totaling $436.6 million for a broad range of innovative research projects involving scientists in 33 countries. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to create "deliverable technologies" - health tools that are not only effective, but also inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and simple to use in developing countries.