Boston-based nonprofit firm Diagnostics For All announced today that it has nabbed a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development, to put toward developing three diagnostic tests for the agriculture space. The firm will use its diagnostics platform to develop a test for detecting milk spoilage, one for targeting the growth of mold in corn, and a third to determine whether cows are pregnant or ready for breeding to help farmers better manage their herds. Diagnostics For All, a Harvard spinout led by veteran biotech executive Una Ryan, previously focused entirely on tests in the human health field, like a paper-based diagnostic product for measuring liver toxicity in HIV and AIDS patients that the firm plans to begin testing later this year.
Author: Erin Kutz
Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.
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