Bill and Melinda Foundation awards grant to Washington professor for HIV study

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded a grant worth $1 million to Jerome from the University of Washington. The foundation gave the funding based on the researcher's study on developing HIV treatments, according to the Seattle Times.

An associate professor of laboratory medicine and microbiology, Jerome is currently developing methods of detecting and removing DNA structures of the sexually transmitted disease (STD). If Jermone and his team complete the study, and discover positive results, they could help develop therapies that dissemble the virus' genetic make up, and rid the body of the STD.

Jermone told the news source that "when we first came up with this idea [to apply for the grant], it was so far out there that really people didn't take us very seriously." He added that "we really would never have dreamed of going to some of the typical funders that fund science in the U.S."

In 2006, an estimated 1.1 million people in the U.S. had either diagnosed or undiagnosed cases of HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Furthermore, more than 42,000 new cases were diagnosed in 2007.