The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now accepting letters of inquiry for the new grant program Biomarkers for the Diagnosis of Tuberculosis.
This grant program is part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, whose purpose is to overcome persistent bottlenecks in creating new tools that can radically improve health in the developing world. With up to $12 million of funding, the new program seeks to validate biomarkers for use in developing a low cost, simple to use test that can quickly and accurately diagnose tuberculosis in low-resource settings. The term biomarker is intended to include all types of markers that have potential utility for tuberculosis diagnosis and can include markers associated with either host or pathogen biology.
A letter of inquiry should be submitted no later than March 31, 2011. More details on the application process are available here.