The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) is now accepting letters of inquiry for a new round of grants as part of its Preventing Preterm Birth initiative (PPB). 

GAPPS seeks projects that discover and characterize longitudinal changes associated with normal and abnormal pregnancy and develop biomarkers to identify at-risk pregnancies through rigorous analysis of underlying biological mechanisms that lead to preterm birth, focusing on the role of high dimensional systems biology and its applications in pregnancy.

The goal of this RFP is to solicit applications utilizing one or more high-throughput systems biology approaches in a pilot study using data and biologic samples collected prospectively throughout the course of gestation for 50 women with spontaneous term delivery and 25 women with early spontaneous preterm birth (less than or equal to 34 weeks gestation).

GAPPS is expecting to fund several projects for up to $500,000 US dollars each. The Preventing Preterm Birth initiative is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health. 

Details and application instructions are available at http://www.gapps.org/healthybirth. Letters of inquiry are being accepted online until 1 December, 2014.

The PPB review committee will review all letters of inquiry submitted, and selected applicants will be invited to submit a full grant proposal.

We look forward to receiving innovative ideas from scientists around the world. If you don't submit a letter of inquiry yourself, we hope you will forward this message to someone else who might be interested.