GenEndeavor receives 2021 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award
Hayward, CA, Oct. 5, 2021 -- GenEndeavor, with the mission to develop novel technology platforms to enable the rapid and early detection of genetic and infectious diseases, receives the 2021 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award focused on COVID-19 research. GenEndeavor will use this 5-year grant award to develop a handheld air monitoring system to rapidly detect and quantify SARS-CoV-2 in real-time at the point of presentation.
The ability to rapidly monitor SARS-CoV-2 in aerosol at the point of presentation is critical to managing the risk of infection by airborne transmission as people return to their workplaces, communities, large events, and schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, current testing paradigms for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols are not amenable to rapid point-of-presentation air monitoring and SARS-CoV-2 quantification in real-time, leading to a poor understanding of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. “Our goal is to develop a tool to track, quantify, and prevent the spread of COVID-19, and to enable a basic understanding of SARS-CoV-2 aerosol transmission, such as viral exposure vs. risk, viral decay rate vs. infectivity, and viral load vs. infectious dose in SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission,” said Dr. Ricardo Mancebo, Founder and CEO of GenEndeavor.
The NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award is part of the Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, which was created to accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries by supporting exceptionally creative scientists with innovative ideas with grant awards. The Transformative Research Award, one of the four NIH Director’s award programs, was established in 2009 to support scientists who are pursuing inherently risky innovative research projects that are transformative and have the potential to establish new paradigms and make a broad impact in biomedical, behavioral, or social sciences within the NIH mission.
“The science put forward by this cohort is exceptionally novel and creative and is sure to push at the boundaries of what is known,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “These visionary investigators come from a wide breadth of career stages and show that groundbreaking science can happen at any career level given the right opportunity.”
“We are grateful to be one of the 19 recipients of the prestigious Transformative Research Award and for the opportunity to make an impact on the spread of COVID-19 by pursuing our out-of-the-box research project proposal and developing our new technology platform to transform how we air-monitor and thus control airborne-transmitted infectious diseases,” said Dr. Mancebo.
Grant Title: Development of a handheld rapid air sensing system to monitor and quantify SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols in real-time (Grant # 1 R01 DE031927-01)
Contact: media@genendeavor.com