Knowledge Generation

Maitreyi Mazumdar of Boston Children's Hospital in the U.S. will use existing data from epidemiology studies in Bangladesh, Mexico City, and Oklahoma to develop a scoring system to identify children at high risk of developing cognitive impairments also beyond childhood. The data were derived from prospective studies of individuals across the prenatal, early childhood and adolescent time periods, and include anthropomorphic measurements, full scale IQ, and other clinical and nutritional data.

Damien Fair of Oregon Health & Science University in the U.S. will determine whether combinations of prenatal and early postnatal stress markers can be used to predict the developmental trajectories of specific cognitive processes known as executive functions, which underlie goal-directed behavior and are important for many social and academic skills.

George Wehby and colleagues at the University of Iowa in the U.S. will evaluate newborn metabolic biomarkers for their ability to predict gestational age, and identify associations between them and long-term academic achievement. They will analyze existing newborn metabolic profiles and academic tests from almost one million children in Iowa born between 1980 and 2006 to identify the most predictive biomarkers. In the future they will expand their method to developing countries to help estimate gestational age and identify newborns at risk of neurodevelopmental defects.

Shannon Ross-Sheehy of East Tennessee State University in the U.S. will study whether simply monitoring eye movements in infants can be used to measure their neural development. During the first year of life, infant's brains are highly plastic and thus potentially more amenable to the correction of any developmental defects. However, these defects are often only detected in childhood, which may be too late.

Laura Harrington of Cornell University in the U.S. will test whether acoustic signals in traps can attract specific disease-causing species of mosquitoes, particularly males, to aid control efforts. Traps usually use chemicals to mostly attract female mosquitoes searching for a blood meal. Mosquitoes are very sensitive to sounds, and males likely use them to identify mates. They will first test different frequencies and magnitudes of sounds representing wing beats from Aedes aegypti females, which transmit dengue fever, for their ability to elicit a physiological response in males.

Brandyce St. Laurent of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. will test whether cow-baited tents can be used to monitor and control disease-causing mosquitoes in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Most Anopheles mosquitoes preferentially bite animals, but they still contribute to malaria transmission in humans, and many bite outdoors, rendering bednets and indoor repellants useless against them. They will produce low-cost tents treated with insecticide, and locally rent cows as bait.

Anika Kinkhabwala of EpiBiome in the U.S. will exploit the development of resistance to bacteriophage by pathogenic bacteria to improve children's gut health. Bacteriophage recognize proteins and other molecules found on the surface of bacteria, which they use to infect and kill them. They will identify bacteriophage isolated from fecal and sewage samples that can target virulence structures on the surface of the pathogenic bacteria enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) and Shigella dysenteriae, which are common diarrhea-causing bacteria.

Wanli Liu of Tsinghua University in China will use high-resolution, high-speed imaging to view and understand the interaction of B cells and viruses with the ultimate goal of developing a vaccine that generates broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Javid, Zhu, and colleagues of Tsinghua University in China have developed a strategy to isolate phenotypically-resistant mycobacteria. They will therefore be able to identify small molecules that are specific for this subpopulation as opposed to the bulk tuberculosis population, which may in turn identify pathways to accelerate TB therapy.

Qi Zhang of Tsinghua University in China will identify and characterize antibody germline precursors of broadly neutralizing monocolocal antibodies (bnmAbs) with the ultimate goal to design an HIV-1 vaccine candidate able to stimulate the precursors to develop into protective antibodies in healthy individuals.