The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made public its intention to give 104 grants of $100 million each to researchers doing novel medical-research experiments.

The co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation say the grants will go to researchers and scientists in 22 countries for initial research on an innovative approach to preventing or curing diseases like AIDS or tuberculosis.

“The quality of the applications exceeded all of our expectations. It was so hard for reviewers to champion just one great idea that we selected almost twice as many projects for funding as we had initially planned ” Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of global health at the Gates Foundation said in a statement before the global health meeting in Bangkok on Wednesday. Yamada announced the grants at the meeting in Bangkok.

The Grand Challenges Explorations grants program is expected to last five years. The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative aims to identify and support creative minds from across scientific disciplines, including those who have not traditionally taken part in global health research, to work on 14 major challenges.

In a year, the selection committee will review the progress of each participant. Those that look promising can apply for grants of $1 million or more, said Melissa Derry, a Gates Foundation program officer for global health policy and advocacy.

The program serves 7 long-term goals to improve health in the developing world: improve vaccines, create new vaccines, control insect vectors, improve nutrition, limit drug resistance, cure infection, measure health status.

The Gates foundation is one of the largest providers of research funds into HIV/AIDS vaccines. The foundation hopes that recent advances in chemical engineering could lead to a new generation of childhood vaccines that are effective after a single dose and do not require refrigeration or needles.

“Most of the approaches that have been tried to date and that are in the pipeline have been from a sort of orthodox way of looking at vaccine,” Dr. Yamada said. “Some novel approaches need to be tried.” The foundation is willing to take risks as well, Yamada said, but they are ready to put substantial funding for those that succeed.

The first grant recipients will be scientists in countries including the Netherlands, Singapore and South Africa. Projects cover a wide range of innovation, including a “mosquito flashlight” to prevent malaria transmission by disrupting wavelengths, self-destructing TB cells, and studying anti-infective properties of the eye to help prevent HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease. 

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It was founded by Bill and Melinda Gates in 2000 and doubled in size by Warren Buffett in 2006. Earlier this year, Bill Gates announced his decision to dedicate 80 percent of his time to the foundation, in order to deal with global problems such as extreme poverty or educational opportunities for people all over the world.

The main goals of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and, in the United States, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology.

Applications for the second round of Grand Challenges Explorations are being accepted through November 2, 2008, the foundation announced.