Submit Letter of Intent for Research Project on Global Health Preventing Preterm Birth Initiative

Deadline: 1 December 2014

The Family Health Grand Challenges in Global Health Preventing Preterm Birth Initiative: A systems biology approach to pregnancy and prematurity is open for Letter of Intent from non-profit organizations or other recognized institutions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), an initiative of Seattle Children’s, partner  to fund the research project.

Fund will be made available to conduct pilot studies to access the feasibility of applying multi-omics high-throughput systems biology. The call aims to bring new investigators, novel technologies, and global attention to the field of maternal, neonatal, and child health through the application of systems biology and computational analysis to pregnancy.

The project objective is to assess methods to explore gestational origins and biological mechanisms that support normal pregnancy and perturbations that contribute to preterm birth, using well-characterized specimens collected throughout the course of pregnancy and by utilizing a broad range of high-throughput systems biology approaches from a variety of biologic samples.

Studies will

1. Strive to understand the biological mechanisms which control pregnancy
2. Identify underlying mechanisms responsible for adverse outcomes, utilizing data and specimens collected from pregnant women over the course of gestation that are analyzed by high dimensional systems biology techniques

The intent of these experiments is to ultimately exploit their findings for development of biomarkers, and new prevention and treatment strategies that will address the burden of preterm birth around the globe.

Grant request can be made for maximum $500,000 (including indirect costs).

Note the Key Dates

1. 1 December 2014 – Letter of Intent Submission Deadline
2. 15 January 2015 – Full Application invitation
3. 16 March 2015 – Application submission deadline
4. 1 May 2015 – Scientific Merit/ Executive Committee Review
5. 15 June 2015 – Earliest start date of the project

Eligibility Criteria

• Proposals should address investigational approaches to identify biomarkers, pathways, or mechanisms directed towards prevention or early diagnosis of disease, as opposed to treatment of established disease.
• The proposed studies should be relevant to large at-risk populations within affected low-and middle-income countries, enhancing the potential for translational solutions.
• Applicant organizations must be individual non-profit organizations, for-profit companies, or other recognized institutions that can successfully execute the activities in their respective topic areas.

To be successful, proposals may include one or more of the following components, or Aims:

1. Identification of a prospective cohort of pregnant women with at minimum blood, urine, stool, and vaginal samples collected at a minimum of two time points during gestation and at delivery. Fetal cord blood and placenta should be collected at delivery.
2. Utilization of high-throughput platforms for analysis of samples obtained from patients enrolled in Aim 1, above. These analyses may include one or more of the following and utilize one or more biologic fluids – Genomics, transcriptomics, ad micro-RNA; Proteomics; Metabolomics; Lipidomics; Metagenomics.
3. Computational analysis of meta-data from multiple platforms (both within and across platforms) above to identify pathways and biomarkers. This may be performed by an independent subcontractor or service, or may be included in individual proposals.

For more information, please visit Request for Proposals.