Grants

VLS’ systems biology platform has been built by hundreds of biochemists, bioinformaticians, mathematicians, data scientists, and software engineers over the last 10 years.

We want the entire World to have free and unlimited access to this advanced platform, to accelerate discoveries of root causes of chronic diseases, cancers, and aging, and develop better preventative, curative, and diagnostic avenues.

We offers in-kind grants to clinicians and researchers at any institution, anywhere in the World. A typical grant would include free:

• Sample collection kits (blood, stool, saliva, urine, plasma, CSF, throat swabs, vaginal swabs, surfaces, etc.). Most samples can be collected at home. All samples are shipped at room temperature and are exempt human specimens, since all pathogens are inactivated.

• Tests which include laboratory and bioinformatics analyses (strain level taxonomy and quantitative gene expression)

• Advanced data science analyses (machine learning)

• State-of-the-art digital research platform for electronic recruitment and consent, collection of clinical data, delivering kits, etc.

• Federally-accredited IRB with authority to approve clinical research in the USA, but VLS can help with ethical review applications elsewhere

An example of a successful grant: A VLS grantee collected saliva samples from oral cancer and cancer-free patients, and provided accurate phenotyping. VLS analyzed all the samples and developed a diagnostic test for oral cancer that has lead to a Genomic Medicine publication (see below) and is currently moving through regulatory approvals in USA and EU.

The applicant and their institution may collect royalties from the commercialization of the product. VLS Grants do not provide direct financial support. However, they include unlimited free VLS research support. If you would like to conduct a large clinical study with relevance to human health, you will need to include high-quality tests that may cost approximately $1000 each, which may limit the size of your study. With a VLS grant, you can include hundreds of participants and obtain clinical-grade data from multiple sites for free. For example, if VLS performs the stool, blood, and saliva tests on 300 participants at two time points, that makes VLS’ grant value of $1,800,000 USD.

The process of obtaining a VLS grant

Eligibility

• Any organization in the World, commercial, educational, non-profit, etc.

• You must have regulatory approvals to send human specimens to VLS laboratories in the USA.

• Only proposals to conduct research on human subjects will be considered. Animal or in vitro research will not be considered.

• Only proposals with a clear commercialization path will be considered.

• Only projects that include a large number (>100) of study participants will be considered.

Application steps

• Submit the pre-proposal (the form is below).

• Our scientific team will review it and contact you if the proposal fits the VLS mission.

• We will schedule a video teleconference for a more detailed discussion. more detailed discussion.

• VLS will work with you to finalize the study protocol and any ethical reviews.

• We will create a partnership agreement between VLS and PI's institution (IP discussions, potential royalties). The grant is awarded and the project starts.