PRESS RELEASE
Strictly embargoed until: 00.01 UK time, Friday 7 March 2008
London School of Hygiene celebrates $59 million in new
Gates funding to fight malaria, HIV/AIDS and
tuberculosis
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has been awarded
grant funding totalling $46.4 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(BMGF) and $12.7 million from other partners, to help find new and effective
ways of treating and preventing malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS.
Malaria
The Malaria Centre at LSHTM is one of the most active malaria research
groupings worldwide. The School currently co-ordinates the Gates Malaria
Partnership (GMP), which was established in 2001 with a $40 million grant from
the BMGF to support malaria research and capacity development in Africa.
The GMP has supported research in a broad range of fields relevant to the
treatment and prevention of malaria in endemic areas, and its research has led to
over 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals. The partnership has established
three malaria training centres in Africa and supported over twenty African
scientists to obtain a PhD degree in an area relevant to the treatment or control
of malaria in their country. The GMP will formally come to an end in December
2008 but new grants from the Gates Foundation to LSHTM, and other
organisations including the Wellcome Trust will allow many of its initiatives to
continue.
The largest grant announced today, for $39,795,736.00 through October 2012,
will support the ACT Consortium, which includes almost 50 academic institutions
in Africa, Asia, Europe and the USA. The ACT Consortium will conduct a coordinated research programme to identify how best to optimize the delivery and
cost-effectiveness of combination drug treatment for malaria in Africa and Asia,
and across a range of epidemiological and healthcare settings. This will include
work on improving access to antimalarials, better targeting and diagnosis,
determining drug side-effects and detecting counterfeit drugs. The research
coordinated from LSHTM will be undertaken by a consortium of academic
institutions including Dangwe West Research Centre in Ghana, International
Health Research Development Centre in Tanzania, the Karolinska Institute in
Sweden, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the National Institute of
Medical Research at the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Cape
Town.
Professor Christopher Whitty is the Principal Investigator for the ACT
Consortium. He comments: ‘We are delighted. There have been great strides
forward in developing new drugs. We now have to start to get them to the people
who need them. The funding by the Gates Foundation to these studies on four
continents, but concentrating on Africa, will help determine how best to achieve
this’.
Dr. Regina Rabinovich, Director of Infectious Diseases Development for the
Gates Foundation, says: ‘The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
and its partners have introduced new momentum and collaboration into the fight
against malaria in recent years. The new initiatives announced today will address
critical unanswered questions, and bring us closer to the day when malaria is
eradicated from the world’.
Professor Greenwood, Director of GMP, will lead research on seasonal
intermittent treatment of malaria in children, with support from a separate Gates
Foundation grant for $2.99 million. This is a promising new approach to the
prevention of malaria in young children in areas where the transmission of
malaria is seasonal. Early trials of this intervention were carried out in children
who were generally not using an insecticide treated bed net (ITN). The new
studies, to be conducted in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali, will investigate
whether intermittent preventive treatment is equally effective in children who
sleep under an ITN.
LSHTM is a partner in a large-scale project to implement intermittent preventive
treatment in children in Senegal, led by the University of Dakar, Senegal which is
funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. LSHTM is providing
epidemiological, statistical and other support to this trial through a grant of
$986,000 from the University of Dakar. Dr. Paul Milligan is the leading LSHTM
investigator on this project.
The School will also receive support from the Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium,
which recently received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and
which is being coordinated by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. The
LSHTM grants, which total $7,671,714, will support four major activities: a multicentre trial based in India and other countries in South East Asia comparing the
safety and efficacy of two new antimalarial drug combinations during pregnancy,
and a strategy aimed at reducing the burden of malaria during pregnancy in India
by determining the efficacy of insecticide-treated nets, intermittent preventive
treatment (IPTP) and intermittent screening and treatment (both led by Dr. Daniel
Chandramohan); a trial of seasonal IPTP use in west Africa (led by Professor
Brian Greenwood) and studies looking at the determinants of pregnant women’s
access to health care and the cost and affordability of scaling up prevention and
treatment strategies under different epidemiological and economic conditions
(Kara Hanson and Jayne Webster).
TB
Ulrich Schaible, Professor in Immunology, has received a Gates Foundation
grant of $3.6 million over two years to develop a reporter imaging system to test
the efficacy of TB drugs.
The project will be based in the School’s Category 3 facility, and the LSHTM
team will lead a consortium which also includes the Barts and the London NHS
Trust, Imperial College, London, the National Institute for Medical Research in
London, and the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH),
based in Heraklion, Crete. The research aims to develop a straightforward,
affordable imaging system which will help to find and identify new, efficient drugs
for TB, especially those which act against latent or persistent bacteria, which are
found in 90% of affected people.
Professor Schaible says: ‘We are delighted to have received this funding. We will
now be able to establish the first ever imaging system of its kind in the world,
which will be based here at the School, and which will enable us to track what
happens to bacteria after treatment, and thereby learn more about which drugs
work best in the fight against tuberculosis’.
HIV/AIDS
The School is receiving a further $4 million of funding from the International
Planned Parenthood Federation, for research into the benefits and costs of a
range of models for delivering integrated HIV and sexual and reproductive health
services in Kenya and Swaziland, and their effects on reducing HIV risk,
associated stigma, and unintended pregnancies. The Prime Investigator for this
project are Susannah Mayhew and Charlotte Watts.
Professor Sir Andrew Haines, Director of the London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine, comments: ‘I am delighted to announce these awards to staff
of the School which reflect both the excellence of the proposed research
programmes and their relevance to global health priorities. They will generate
important new knowledge to improve the prospects for effective treatment and
prevention of malaria, TB and HIV which threaten the lives of millions of people
around the world and build on the major achievements arising from previous
research at LSHTM’.
For further information about any of the grants, or to speak to the Principal
Investigators, please contact the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Press Office on 020 7927 2802/2073 or email gemma.howe@lshtm.ac.uk
Ends.
Notes:
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is Britain's national school of
public health and a leading postgraduate institution in Europe for public health
and tropical medicine. Part of the University of London, the London School is an
internationally recognized centre of excellence in public health, international
health and tropical medicine with a remarkable depth and breadth of expertise. It
is one of the highest-rated research institutions in the UK.