RISK AND REWARD

What We’re Learning: We need better ways to explore unorthodox ideas that could generate dramatic results.

Only a small portion of medical research today focuses on the health problems that disproportionately affect the world's poorest people. Historically, this lack of resources has meant that the scientific community must gamble on a relatively small number of ideas generated from within small, specialized research communities. Five years ago, we helped launch the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative to help address this problem by engaging the world’s best scientists to study the critical obstacles to improving global health.

We’ve made more than 40 Grand Challenges grants and are encouraged by the progress to date. Investigators have already published hundreds of scientific articles, and a few projects are heading into clinical trials soon.

But discovery is a long-term and ongoing process, requiring contributions from experts in every discipline and from all over the world. To encourage this kind of approach, we launched a program called Grand Challenges Explorations in early 2008. Over the next five years, we will award hundreds of $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grants to people with good ideas, so they can see where the ideas lead. The grant application is just two pages; we don’t require preliminary data, and the review process is quick. If the ideas prove promising, then we will offer the chance to apply for additional funding of $1 million or more.

The unconventional ideas we’re hoping to incubate with Grand Challenges Explorations are all unproven, and we expect that the vast majority of them will fail. But if even a few uncover a new way forward in the fight against the deadly diseases of the developing world, then we will consider the initiative a success.

The program immediately generated a lot of interest. In the first month, applicants from more than 80 countries created nearly 2,500 accounts on our Web site.

Large grants are appropriate in many cases, especially when there is broad consensus in the scientific community about the best approach to a given problem. But small, exploratory grants have an important place, too. When the path forward is unclear, they can help uncover new ideas and new approaches to problems. We hope that combining these two methods will accelerate discovery of solutions to the greatest global health problems.