BIDMC scientist Ionita Ghiran, M.D., receives Gates Foundation grant
Ionita Ghiran, MD, an investigator in the Division of Allergy and Inflammation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has been awarded a $100,000 Grand Challenges Exploration Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges Exploration (GCE) program funds scientists and researchers worldwide in the pursuit of novel ideas that can break the mold in solving persistent global health challenges. Ghiran's project uses the principles of magnetic levitation and cell phone technology to create an inexpensive, portable device to quickly and accurately diagnose malaria outside of the laboratory setting. The GCE received more than 2,500 grant submissions from 100 countries; Ghiran's work is one of 88 projects to receive funding.
"GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas for serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed," said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "These grants are meant to spur on new discoveries that could ultimately help save millions of lives."
Malaria causes nearly 1 million deaths per year throughout developing countries (85 percent of which are children under the age of 5) and parasites are becoming increasingly resistant to anti-malarial drugs, in part due to overdiagnosis.
"The lack of suitable methods of malaria diagnosis makes presumptive treatment often the only available option for local health service providers," notes Ghiran. To address this challenge, Ghiran, in collaboration with Pierre Striehl, PhD, from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, developed an antibody-free diagnostic screening device which separates malaria-infected red blood cells from uninfected red blood cells by way of magnetic levitation.
"Our screening device is light-weight, disposable and inexpensive to manufacture," he notes. The prototype system requires less than a drop of finger-prick blood and a small volume of red-blood-cell friendly buffer containing paramagnetic ions. Diagnostic results can be obtained within a few minutes solely by using a set of permanent magnets immobilized in a plastic structure surrounding a glass or plastic capillary containing the blood. Results are visualized, recorded and stored using a standard camera phone. No additional imaging equipment, or staining reagents are required.
"This method helps fill the need for malarial diagnostic technologies capable of promptly and reliably ascertaining true malarial infections in the field," says Ghiran. "We hope that this will help prevent the overdiagnosis of malaria and subsequent drug resistance."
Provided by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
