Pneumonia

Friso Schlottau of Covidien in the U.S. will develop a durable device that can measure heart and respiration rates and blood oxygen levels in people of all ages, including newborns, in low-resource settings. They will build a prototype device that can be charged like a mobile phone, incorporating adapted algorithms and a robust multi-patient sensor that can withstand extended periods of use. The device will be bench tested by simulating the range of sick and healthy patients to ensure it is functional under different conditions.

Coenie Louw from the Gateway Health Institute in South Africa will develop an oil-based suspension of the antibiotic amoxicillin, which is commonly used to treat pneumonia in children. Amoxicillin is normally reconstituted with water, but it can then only be stored for two weeks. A ready-packed oil-based formula would increase stability up to two years without the need for refrigeration, and also reduce the risk of contamination. He will mix amoxicillin with different types of oils and test their stability under different environmental conditions, and their viscosity for oral dosing.

Sangwei Lu from University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. will combine peanut butter with the antibiotic amoxicillin as a way to both treat pneumonia and boost nutrition in children from developing countries. They will test different formulations in healthy volunteers for texture and taste, and analyze stability over 12 months at different temperatures. They will also test the formulations for activity in a mouse model of pneumonia. The aim is to produce an inexpensive and ready-to-use medicine suitable for developing countries.

Rinti Banerjee of IIT Bombay in India will develop skin patches for safer and more effective dosing of the antibiotic amoxicillin in children with pneumonia in developing countries. Amoxicillin is usually provided as a tablet or powder that requires multiple doses per day, which, along with the bitter taste, is off-putting for children. They will develop amoxicillin-enclosed lipid nanoparticles that mimic the outer surface of the skin, and optimize their size and ability to encapsulate the drug.

Chenjie Xu of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore will develop a stable and child-friendly formulation of the antibiotic amoxicillin, which is used to treat pneumonia, for use in developing countries. Amoxicillin is unstable in water, and for oral delivery requires on-site mixing with sterile water, which is not always available. They will first encapsulate amoxicillin in microparticles, which become soluble only when exposed to an acidic environment such as in the stomach. The microparticles also help increase the concentration of amoxicillin and mask its unpleasant taste.

Jonathan Rubin of the University of Michigan in the U.S. will develop a simple, low-cost ultrasound device with cell phone display that can diagnose children with co-existing pneumonia and malnutrition. Over two million children per year die from pneumonia, and many of these deaths are caused by coexisting malnutrition. They will design an ultrasound stethoscope device to automatically measure lung expansion and contraction during breathing to detect ventilation problems caused by pneumonia as well as the levels of subcutaneous fat on the chest wall to detect malnutrition.

Carina King of the Institute for Global Health in the United Kingdom will use bioelectric impedance vector analysis (BIVA) to measure nutritional status in children with pneumonia in Malawi in order to improve treatment. Malnutrition is strongly associated with poor prognosis in pneumonia but is difficult to accurately assess. BIVA measures bioelectric properties to predict physiological parameters such as hydration and body mass of specific body regions.

Heba Khamis of the University of New South Wales in Australia will use smartphone technology to more accurately measure malnutrition in children from developing countries, which puts them at increased risk of death from diseases such as pneumonia. They will develop an image-processing algorithm for calculating three key growth parameters (height, and arm and head circumference) and thereby assessing nutritional status from a photograph of a child taken by a smartphone.

Bastiaan Hoogendoorn at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom will develop a simple, inexpensive breath-testing device to measure the type and levels of bacteria in the lungs for rapid diagnosis of pneumonia in children in low-resource settings. Rather than condensing the exhaled breath, which can cause variation, the device directly captures respiratory fluid droplets containing non-volatile pathogen markers. These markers can then be identified using low-cost commercially available bioassay kits.

Patricia Hibberd of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will develop a low-cost thermal imaging system for a smart phone to diagnose bacterial pneumonia in children from developing countries where the standard chest X-ray is often unavailable. They predict that children with pneumonia specifically caused by bacteria will have asymmetric "hot spots" of high temperatures in the lungs caused by localized inflammation.