A Medical Device Daily

Seventh Sense Biosystems (Cambridge, Massachusetts) reported that it has received a Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Howard Bernstein MD, titled "On-skin and Intra-dermal Malaria Diagnostics with Unprecedented Simplicity of Use Based on Bio-Responsive Particles and Interstitial Fluid Analysis."

Bernstein's project is one of 76 grants reported by the Gates Foundation in the third funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists around the world explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. The grants were provided to scientists in 16 countries on five continents. The initiative is highly competitive, receiving almost 3,000 proposals in this round.

The Grand Challenges Explorations award will fund research at Seventh Sense aimed at developing a new class of products for monitoring malaria infection that combine extreme ease-of-use, low cost, speed, and field-compatibility. Under the grant, Seventh Sense will adapt its particle-based detection technology and interstitial fluid access devices to enable direct visualization of infection status without the need for cumbersome and expensive gadgetry.

In other grants news, A new regional Proof-of-Concept program is pumping $600,000 into technology commercialization in the Greater Philadelphia region. The University City Science Center's QED Program awarded three researchers at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania (both Philadelphia) a total of $600,000 to pursue commercially-relevant R&D related to life science technologies. The "winning" researchers will each receive $100,000 from the Science Center, a $100,000 match from their supporting institution, and business advice for one year.

The QED Program, the first multi-institutional proof-of-concept program for life science technologies, bridges the "valley of death" — the gap between research grants and commercial seed investment, by awarding grants to life science technologies with high potential in the healthcare industry. The three awards are the first of the QED Program.

The three funded technologies are:

• A portable, low-cost, radiation-free breast cancer screening device for use in women with dense breasts.

• Nanostructured thin films for reducing bacterial infection via external bone fixator pins.

• Also the development of a handheld wound-healing monitor will be the last project funded.