London School's 20-fold grant increase covers DNA vaccines to politics

LONDON, August 25 (Science Analysed). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's recent US$40 million grant to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for work on malaria stretches all the way from research to implementation, Professor Eleanor Riley of the LSHTM and co-director of the malaria project, has told BioMed Central.

Riley explained that the money would support three different activities. One will be field research on new drugs, vaccines and insecticides for their ability to control malaria. "The problem with existing funding is that it has been spread over a lot of different institutions, and it's always taken a long time to get sufficient money together, from different people. For each trial you've had to go back to the drawing board to create a new consortium."

"The research component will be mostly with institutions in Africa, obviously" said Riley, "but the preclinical trials will be mostly with hospitals ...