The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced its newest list of Grand Challenges Explorations grantees. Round 18 focused on four challenges – two of particular interest to contraceptive researchers:
Develop novel platforms to accelerate contraceptive drug discovery
Accelerate development of new therapies for childhood cryptosporidium infection
Design new solutions to data integration for malaria elimination
Competition for $100,000 in seed money to test novel ideas was extremely stiff. Of the more than 1,000 research proposals that were submitted, only 28 were approved. The winning research teams represent 11 countries.