Gates Foundation Seeks Out Nontypical Research To Fund

2008年10月23日

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $100 million in small doses to researchers doing novel medical-research experiments -- part of a new way to use the Web to reach medical researchers who might be missed in a traditional grant-selection process.

The Gates foundation, the world's largest private philanthropy, said Wednesday that it will grant 104 scientists and experimenters in 22 countries $100,000 each for research into areas that include how to prevent or cure HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The $100 million earmarked for the program will be distributed over five years.

The grants are a fraction of the Gates foundation's roughly $3 billion in annual giving from its $35 billion total endowment. But they could be an important test of how to provide smaller grants to a greater number of researchers in a shorter amount of time than is standard in medical research.

The program, which has been planned for a year and is called Grand Challenges Explorations, aims to operate more along the lines of Silicon Valley's investment approach, in which venture capitalists provide relatively small amounts of capital to a large number of ideas in the hope that just a few will succeed and become the next Microsoft or Google.

'This is a high-risk program,' said Tachi Yamada, president of global health at the foundation. 'We recognize that most of these things are not going to pan out.'

Traditional medical-research funding typically involves lengthy reviews and much larger amounts of money. The Gates foundation's more-traditional health-related grants, for instance, usually range between $2 million and $3 million and can take nine months or more to be awarded.

The foundation culled the 104 grantees in the new program from 4,000 applicants that filled out a two-page application over the Internet. It encouraged experimenters to propose offbeat or novel approaches to problems. Sixty people inside and outside the Gates foundation chose the winning applications. The selection group included Nobel Prize winners, though no members of the group had specific expertise in the medical areas addressed by the program. The group wasn't told the identity of the applicants.

In a year, the selection committee will review the progress of each grantee. Those that look promising can apply for grants of $1 million, foundation officials said. Dr. Yamada said he expects about six of the 104 grantees will show enough promise to be considered for the larger grant.

The first round of grants will go to students and scientists in countries including the Netherlands, Singapore and South Africa. Most of the grantees are in the U.S. The ideas include a 'stealth weapon' for destroying HIV and for using mosquitoes as 'flying syringes' to vaccinate people.

Dr. Yamada said the quest to find a vaccine for HIV/AIDS would benefit from the program. The Gates foundation is one of the largest providers of research funds into HIV/AIDS vaccines.

'Most of the approaches that have been tried to date and that are in the pipeline have been from a sort of orthodox way of looking at vaccine,' Dr. Yamada said. 'Some novel approaches need to be tried.'

Robert A. Guth

盖茨基金会赞助非传统医学研究

比

尔及梅林达•盖茨基金会(Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)将向从事非传统医学研究实验的研究人员分发1亿美元的经费，经费发放程序将采用通过网络向那些可能错过传统资助遴选过程的医学研究人员提供资助的新途径。盖茨基金会是全球最大的民间慈善组织。

盖茨基金会周三称，将向22个国家的104名科学家和实验人员提供每人10万美元的资助，用于预防和治疗艾滋病和肺结核等领域的研究。该计划的1亿美元将在五年时间内发放。

盖茨基金会总捐赠额高达350亿美元，这笔资助只是每年约30亿美元捐助规模的一个零头。但对于如何在比标准医学资助程序更短的时间内向更多的研究人员发放小笔资助而言，这可能是一个重要的考验。

这项名为Grand Challenges Explorations的计划已经筹划了一年，旨在按照更接近硅谷投资模式的方式进行运作，即风险投资家向大量设想提供规模相对较小的资金，希望有少数创意能够取得成功，成为下一个微软(Microsoft)或谷歌(Google)。

盖茨基金会全球医疗总裁Tachi Yamada说，这是一个高风险的计划。我们认识到其中多数项目都会无果而终。

传统的医学研究资助程序通常包括冗长的审批程序，资金量也要大得多。比如，盖茨基金会更为传统的医疗相关资助金额通常在200万至300万美元，需要9个月或更长的时间发放。

该基金会从在网上提交了两页申请表的4,000名申请者中遴选出104位受资助者。它鼓励实验人员提出大胆或创新的方法来解决问题。盖茨基金会内外的60人负责选择获胜申请方案。评审小组中包括诺贝尔奖获得者，不过该评审小组的成员并没有该计划要解决医学领域的专业知识。评审小组并不知道申请者的身份。

遴选委员会将在一年的时间里审核每一位受资助者的研究进展。基金会管理人员称，那些有前途的项目可以申请100万美元的赞助。Yamada说，他预计104位受资助者中约有6人能够显示出足够的潜力，值得考虑授予更大金额的资助。

第一轮资助将授予荷兰、新加坡和南非等国的学生和科学人员。大多数受资助者都位于美国。这些创意包括摧毁艾滋病毒的"秘密武器"和用蚊子作为给人们接种疫苗的"飞行注射器"。

Yamada说，该计划可能有利于寻找艾滋病疫苗的研究。盖茨基金会是艾滋病疫苗研究资金的最大提供者之一。

Yamada称，迄今为止已经尝试和准备尝试的大多数方法都是用正统的途径寻找疫苗。需要尝试一些新奇的手段。

Robert A. Guth