Infectious Disease

Mohlopheni Marakalala of the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa will study the role of specific proteins associated with immune cell death in tuberculosis patients to better understand how the disease progresses and help develop new diagnostics and therapies. Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial disease that causes 1.5 million deaths per year, mostly in poor countries. Understanding how the human immune system responds to TB infection could help develop more effective, host-targeted treatments.

Yingda Xie of Rutgers, The State University of NJ and JoAnne Flynn of the University of Pittsburgh, both in the U.S., will develop a non-invasive approach for testing candidate anti-tuberculosis compounds in animal models and patients using positron emission tomography-x-ray computed tomography (PET/CT). Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death in developing countries, and rates are sustained by the causative bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, developing resistance to current drugs.

David Aanensen from the University of Oxford and the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom and Maria van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization in Switzerland will combine next generation DNA sequencing technology with a simple, web-based data collection, processing, and distribution platform to better track the global spread of deadly infectious diseases including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV). MERS - also known as camel flu - is a viral disease that causes fever, cough, diarrhea, and shortness of breath, and is transmitted from camels to humans.

Iruka Okeke of the University of Ibadan, College of Medicine in Nigeria and Kat Holt of Monash University in Australia will set-up a remote laboratory that uses nanopore sequencing as a low-cost, portable method to monitor the spread of antimicrobial resistance in rural areas of Africa and combine it with genome editing tools for more rapid diagnosis and improved treatment. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when pathogens are able to survive treatments that previously would have killed them.

Achim Hoerauf of IMMP in Germany will apply artificial intelligence (AI) to speed the development of treatments for onchocerciasis, which is an infectious disease commonly known as River Blindness caused by a parasitic worm. The parasites are spread by affected blackflies, and the worm larvae accumulate in the skin and eyes, causing irritation and sometimes blindness. Nearly 21 million cases occur each year, and 99% of affected people live in Africa.

Ruth Müller of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium and Meghnath Dhimal of the Nepal Health Research Council will provide entomological training for health science students and medical professionals and increase community awareness of vector-borne diseases (VBDs) in Nepal to better equip the population to deal with disease outbreaks. VBDs like those caused by the dengue, zika, or chikungunya viruses cause more than 700,000 deaths annually, mostly in poor countries with limited public health resources and tropical climates.

Eric Ochomo of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in Kenya and Luc Djogbenou of the University of Abomey (UAC) in Benin will develop a curriculum to teach African scientists how to use genetic approaches to combat insecticide resistance in the fight against malaria. Malaria is a disease that kills almost 500,000 people annually, most in sub-Saharan Africa. People become infected when bitten by mosquitoes that transmit the disease-causing parasites. Insecticide treatment of bed nets and indoor areas are effective methods of disease control, but mosquitoes are becoming resistant.

Pamela Schnupf of Paris Descartes University in France will develop an oral vaccine to prevent infectious diarrhea in children by engineering a non-pathogenic bacteria to express pathogen molecules that can be safely delivered in bacterial spores. Diarrheal disease caused largely by Shigella and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children under five years of age in low-resource settings.

Med Biotech is a research-focused NGO based in Kampala, Uganda that has developed Home Decoration for Malaria Control (HD4MC). HD4MC adapts the customary practice of plastering the walls of mud-walled homes with soil by mixing WHO-approved insecticide into the soil and using this insecticide-mixed soil to plaster walls for household vector control. .

Autom River Inc. is a Canadian start-up that developed a 100% bio-based compostable bin (the Greenlid) for kitchen food waste and are translating this technology to create a biodegradable mosquito trap (BMT), impregnated with insecticide, that kills both eggs and adult mosquitos.