Infectious Disease

Elizabeth Kigondu of the Kenya Medical Research Institute will identify natural products that block the resistance mechanism developed by tuberculosis-causing bacteria against existing anti-mycobacterial drugs to help more effectively treat tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB) is a highly prevalent and severe disease that has been exacerbated by the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB for which only limited treatments are available. Efflux pumps play a critical role in mycobacterial resistance to two drugs, spectinomycin and rifampicin.

Lyn-Marie Birkholtz of the University of Pretoria in South Africa will identify gametocytocidal

Maurício Barretto of Fiocruz in Brazil will integrate COVID-19 data from Brazil into existing harmonized datasets from over 500 million people across the world, to better inform public health strategies. International data on COVID-19 is needed to help lift the world out of the pandemic. However, there is little real-world data from South Asia or Brazil. They will map data from the COVID-19 surveillance database for the State of Bahia, which covers a population of 15 million people, to the common data model known as OMOP, which brings together disparate data into a common format.

Haroon Hafeez of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in Pakistan will integrate COVID-19 data from Pakistan into existing harmonized datasets from over 500 million people across the world, to better inform public health strategies. International data on COVID-19 is needed to help lift the world out of the pandemic. However, there is little real-world data from South Asia or Brazil.

Lyle McKinnon of the University of Manitoba in Canada will test whether a specific type of immune cell known as tissue resident memory T cells, which are found in the nasal cavity during SARS-CoV-2 infection, help limit disease severity and viral replication. The nasal mucosa is the first place in the body that is exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, little is known about the local immune response and how this may influence disease progression, which varies dramatically between people.

Fatma Guerfali of Institut Pasteur de Tunis in Tunisia and Jesse Gitaka of Mount Kenya University in Kenya, will implement wastewater SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in diverse sanitation settings in Kenya and Tunisia to help determine the true number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2, which is currently underestimated. The detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage can be used to monitor virus circulation in the population. However, this is more challenging in settings with diverse sanitation practices, such as in many parts of Africa.

Geoffrey Siwo of the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. will use a computational approach to identify broad-spectrum antiviral drugs that trigger an innate immune response and could be used against a range of viruses. Traditional drug discovery approaches target viral proteins, but this requires prior knowledge of the virus and can lead to the development of resistance. In contrast, compounds that trigger the host’s natural biological defense mechanism inside each cell are less likely to cause resistance, and can be used for treating novel viruses as well as for vaccine adjuvants.

Jessica Manning and Fabiano Oliveira of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US are leveraging metagenomic next-generation sequencing technology to control vector-borne and enteric diseases in Cambodia. In Phase I, which coincided with the country's worst ever recorded dengue epidemic, they documented the full range of pathogens carried by wild mosquitoes and in serum samples from around 400 febrile patients in a peri-urban hospital in Kampong Speu Province.

Martha Cecilia Suárez-Mutis of Fiocruz in Brazil will develop a molecular surveillance tool with genome sequencing to monitor the entry and subsequent spread of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria-causing parasite, from across the country’s borders. Elimination of malaria requires close monitoring of the parasite population to track the emergence and spread of new genetic variants, particularly those resistant to the commonly used anti-malarial drugs, which will severely restrict elimination efforts.

Silvia Maria Di Santi at the São Paulo State Department of Health in Brazil will integrate genomics techniques into their routine malaria surveillance program to genetically characterize the parasite populations and monitor transmission dynamics in gold mining regions. Gold mining is associated with deforestation, which expands breeding sites for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, poor housing conditions, and illegal activities, which makes eliminating malaria in these regions more difficult.