The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 11/6/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy of Brian Foy Brian Foy, center, stands in the southeastern Senegalese village of Ibel, holding a container full of mosquitoes along with Dr. Massamba Sylla. The backpacks that they are wearing suck mosquitoes from the walls inside the huts.

A research team in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences received a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation earlier this month. The money will bolster its efforts to develop research and drugs to combat mosquito-borne diseases transmitted to humans.

The grant stems from the Gates Foundation's scientific initiative called Grand Challenges Explorations. The $100 million project that Gates Foundation officials said was designed to "promote innovation in global health" and aid scientists in their efforts of exploring new and unique solutions to the health challenges in developing countries.

"This is transitional research, where your studies are very close to helping people - maybe preventing the transmission of a disease," said Brian Foy, assistant professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology. "That gives us satisfaction, because it can become very esoteric working in a test tube all day; this keeps us grounded -- it's why we're doing science."

Foy, his associate Massamba Sylla, a visiting scientist who coordinates mosquito and malaria research in Senegal, and a research team of CSU graduate and undergraduate students plan to use the money to continue to test drugs designed to kill the disease-carrying, parasitic worms that live in host mosquitoes.

The grant falls under the MicroRx umbrella, the university's Infectious Disease Supercluster, which was established in February to promote research on infectious diseases and speed the research transition into tangible products to be sold in the "global marketplace" according to university officials.

And while Foy said his team is a part of a long line of scientists to test drugs and other methods with the intent of reducing the occurrence of malaria in developing countries - regions of West Africa in particular.

He said that he is proud to be doing "basic science" in a lab which transfers into tangible, "transitional research" when it is developed into a method that directly helps people.

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