The George Washington University (""""""""GW"""""""") seeks funding to renovate approximately 25,400 net square feet of obsolete space to create a centrally located modern research complex for the new Research Center for the Neglected Diseases of Poverty in Washington, DC. The Research Center will conduct translational research for the development of new vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for both neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), the devastating scourges of the """"""""bottom billion""""""""-the poorest people in the world who live on less than $1/day, and a unique group of neglected infections of poverty (NIPs) in the U.S. which have been recently recognized as one of the greatest health disparities affecting U.S. African American and Hispanic American populations. GW has launched a multifacted assault on these two groups of neglected diseases through its schools of medicine and public health, with faculty members conducting fundamental NIH-sponsored research on hookworm, schistosomiasis, opisthorchiasis, and toxoplasmosis, as well as epidemiological and policy work. GW is home to the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative (HHVI), a Gates Foundation-funded product development partnership (PDP) that is transitioning new vaccine antigens from discovery into Phase 1 trials. Also, extensive research is underway to study the major U.S. NIPs including toxocariasis, toxoplasmosis, and Chagas disease, currently affecting millions of African Americans and Hispanic Americans. A health policy initiative for both the NTDs and NIPs is also in progress at GW and we host the first open-access journal on these conditions, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. While this research program at GW is strong, the physical plant that supports these investigators is so deficient it inhibits their co-location and growth of the program. This proposal aims to address these deficiencies by creating a state-of-the art research facility capable of housing the multidisciplinary researchers currently scattered across the University campus. The renovation project will employ green/sustainable technologies and design approaches, and will obtain LEED certification. All spaces will be ADA accessible. GW is fully committed to expanding the neglected diseases of poverty research program and demonstrates this through cost sharing 31% ($7.14M) of the building project costs, as well as recruiting new research-intensive tenured-track faculty in this area and creating an educational backbone for specialty biotechnology tracks and certificates for employees of the Research Center. This project will create or maintain at least 325 American jobs, with an intensive program to preferentially hire talented under-represented minority individuals from the District of Columbia and those with disadvantaged backgrounds. This project will transform and expand biomedical research at GW University, and the Research Center will significantly help address some of the greatest health disparities in the U.S. and around the world-the neglected infections of poverty and the neglected tropical diseases.
