Can Chocolate Cure Malaria?
It has only been a few months since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the previous round of grants in its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, which aims to inspire innovative thinking on public health. But already the foundation is at it again — it just announced 76 new five-year health research grants of $100,000 each, according to the Associated Press. And there will be many more grants to come; this is only round three of 14.
Some of the brilliant, if unusual, ideas in this round are:
using chewing gum to detect the presence of malaria; combating the malaria parasite with chocolate;diagnosing pneumonia via digital recovering devices; and identifying tuberculosis proteins using color-changing material.The guidelines stipulate that projects must aim to improve or create new vaccines, control insect vectors, improve nutrition, limit drug resistance, cure infection or measure health status. The 305 grants awarded in all three rounds so far have gone to researchers all over the world (check out where on this handy map).
Steven Maranz, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College, told the Associated Press that the Grand Challenges program rewards out-of-the-box thinking. He is the one who plans to study whether chocolate can kill the malaria parasite. ''This is an exploration grant,” he said. “The ideas I've been talking to you about need experimental support. Nothing is proven at this point.”
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