CHEVY CHASE, Md, July 26, 2000 -- The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has awarded $15 million in grants to help scientists outside the United States develop new approaches to overcoming malaria, tuberculosis, Chagas disease, Lassa fever, amebiasis and other infectious and parasitic diseases.
"These diseases cause great suffering around the world, particularly in developing countries, yet they receive inadequate scientific attention," said HHMI President Thomas R. Cech in announcing the grants to 45 scientists in 20 countries. "There is a great opportunity to apply the new tools of molecular biology and related fields to learn exactly how these diseases cause so much harm and to develop fundamentally new approaches to controlling, or even curing, them. We've identified a group of outstanding scientists who can push this research forward."
Each scientist will receive between $225,000 and $450,000 over five years. HHMI selected them competitively on the basis of their accomplishments, potential and research plans. Some of the scientists focus on specific diseases, while others study biological processes that underlie many diseases or specialize in topics such as the emergence of new pathogens or drug-resistant strains. The researchers use diverse tools, ranging from new genomic techniques to X-ray crystallography, mathematical modeling and epidemiology. The scientists come from Argentina (1); Australia (11); Bangladesh (1); Brazil (4); Canada (4); France (3); Germany (1); Greece (1); Guinea (1); India (1); Israel (1); Mexico (4); Russia (2); South Africa (1); Switzerland (1); Taiwan (1); Uganda (1); United Kingdom (4); Uruguay (1) and Venezuela (1).
The initiative is HHMI's first international competition to focus on scientists working on a specific research topic rather than in a particular geographic region. HHMI's international program has previously awarded $53 million in grants to scientists in 19 countries. HHMI also has two other international competitions under way. The first will award $15 million for biomedical scientists in the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; the other, $16.25 million for biomedical scientists in Canada and Latin America. This international program complements HHMI's principal activity of carrying out research with its own scientific teams at 72 locations across the United States.