Lipotek Pty Ltd Receives
$100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations Grant
for Innovative Global Health Research by team
MEDIA CONTACT - Dr Ines Atmosukarto +61 2 6125 0783 or ines@lipotek.com.au
FOR RELEASE ON 4 May, 2009 at 10:00 am EDT www.lipotek.com.au
Lipotek announced today that it has received a US$100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project headed by Ines Atmosukarto PhD titled “Liposomal dendritic-cell (DC)-targeted vaccines for TB (Tuberculosis).”
Lipotek’s project is one of 81 grants announced by the Gates Foundation in the second funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists around the world explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. The grants were provided to scientists in 17 countries on six continents.
To receive funding, Lipotek showed in a two-page application how the proposed idea falls outside current scientific paradigms and might lead to significant advances in global health. The initiative is highly competitive, receiving more than 3,000 proposals in this round.
The existing BCG vaccine (against Tuberculosis) is a live vaccine and its efficacy has been shown to be impaired by residual immunity generated by cross reactivity with environmental mycobacteria. This is a significant problem in countries where these mycobacteria are abundant and the burden of the disease is high.
Lipotek’s CSO, Dr Atmosukarto, said, “We have been working on the development of novel platform technologies that are based on our increased understanding of the immune system. More specifically, we aim to harness the properties of specific immune cells - the dendritic cells (DCs) - which are critically important for the induction of an effective T cell immune response against many pathogens including tuberculosis (TB).”
We propose that an optimal solution lies in the design of novel liposomal-type vaccines based on a versatile platform (the Lipovaxin platform) that allows for the effective presentation of multiple protective antigens to dendritic cells (DCs). For TB such a vaccine would efficiently target numerous mycobacterial antigens to DCs and this in turn is expected to induce potent TB immunity.
This grant will provide Lipotek with the crucial seed funding needed to conduct the initial studies that will allow the production and testing of laboratory prototypes of the TB vaccine and to conduct the initial in vitro studies to demonstrate that the approach is effective.
“The winners of these grants are doing truly exciting and innovative work,” said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program. “I’m optimistic that some of these exploratory projects will lead to life-saving breakthroughs for people in the world’s poorest countries.”
About Grand Challenges Explorations
Grand Challenges Explorations is a five-year, $100 million initiative of the Gates Foundation to promote innovation in global health. The program uses an agile, streamlined grant process – applications are limited to two pages, and preliminary data are not required. Proposals are reviewed and selected by a committee of foundation staff and external experts, and grant decisions are made within approximately three months of the close of the funding round.
Applications for the next round of Grand Challenges Explorations are being accepted through May 28, 2009. Grant application instructions, including the list of topic areas in which proposals are currently being accepted, are available at the Grand Challenges Explorations website.
