The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded 81 grants worth $100,000 (£65,000) each for research projects into unconventional approaches to tackle global health issues, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases (Telegraph, AP, Baltimore Sun).

Among the grant recipients of five-year grants is Eric Lam at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who is exploring tomatoes as an antiviral drug delivery system.

Other winners include researchers at the University of Exeter, England, who will seek to build an inexpensive instrument to diagnose malaria by using magnets to detect the waste products of the malaria parasite in human blood. Mei Wu at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, US, also won funding to see if shooting a laser at a person’s skin before administering a vaccine can enhance immune response.

Each grant recipient will also get the chance to win follow-on grants of $1 million if their projects show success.

Taking a different approach to conventional funding systems, the foundation asked only for a two-page application and no preliminary data for the first stage award. It is hoped that this approach will encourage and accelerate bold and largely unproven research, reports the Times.