Healthcare company Lyndra Therapeutics reported on Tuesday the receipt of USD13m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the planned development of an oral contraceptive that would last for multiple weeks.

The company added that the grant is part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Family Planning programme, which is working to bring access to high-quality contraceptive information, services and supplies to women in low- and middle-income countries as well as to address lack of family planning options globally.

Under the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds, the company is designing and building a new once-monthly oral combination therapy that delivers a continuous dose of estrogen and progestin, the same drugs used in daily combined oral contraceptives, in collaboration with Routes2Results, a health research organization .

In addition, the company received the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant for the development of a long-acting malaria drug, Phase II clinical trials as well as for expansion of its Phase I pipeline and manufacturing scale-up.