The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation has announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a 2-year grant of $471,858 to principal investigator Frans Walther for further development of an aerosolized synthetic lung surfactant for the treatment of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) in newborn babies. In March 2021, the institute announced that the Gates Foundation had licensed a dry powder formulation of the lung surfactant and intended to develop it for use in low- and middle-income countries.
Walter, who is also Professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, commented, “I am very pleased to have received this generous grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This grant will allow us to test the efficacy of both liquid and dry powder surfactant formulations along with developed delivery devices in vitro and in vivo, and to determine the best formulation of peptide, phospholipid, and excipient for lead candidate selection along with a device and subsequent IND-enabling studies. Our goal is to design, synthesize, and bring effective lung surfactant peptides, modeled after the sequence of human surfactant proteins B and C to clinical care. This grant will help us achieve these research goals.”
The Lundquist Institute President and CEO David Meyer said, “The Institute is grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their support. This is the type of trailblazing and state-of-the-art research that we are known for, especially given that we have been in the forefront of innovation in the field of lung surfactants since the 1980s.”
Read the Lundquist Institute press release.
