Infectious Disease

Matt Berg of Ona in the U.S. will combine high-resolution satellite images, spatial sampling statistics, and mobile data collection to better calculate local immunization coverage in Bangladesh. Current approaches often vastly overestimate coverage because of the difficulty in calculating actual population sizes from nationwide data and birth registries. As a more effective approach, they will use satellite imagery to detect liveable structures within a set area, and software that selects possible households that require verification by community surveillance teams.

Samantha Dolan and Peter Rabinowitz of the University of Washington in the U.S., and Ian Njeru of I-TECH Kenya, will improve digital data collection and monitoring of childhood immunizations at Kenyan health facilities by optimizing workflows. Using electronic tools to track immunizations has the potential to improve the accuracy of data collection and reporting, identify children who have not been vaccinated, and free up time for health care workers. To fully realize this potential, workflow patterns need optimizing for different types of health facilities.

Taslimarif Saiyed from Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) in India will develop microfluidics-based pH sensors for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) detection. AMR is big healthcare challenge worldwide and particularly in India. Susceptibility assays are vital to study the emergence of new AMR strains in a community or geography, especially during epidemics. The proposed system - Rapid Personalized Antibiotic Susceptibility Assay (r-PASA) - is a DNA-based assay with pH sensors on a microfluidics platform.

Gautam V. Soni from Raman Research Institute in India will develop a Resistive Pulse Technique (RPT) for malaria detection based on the established fact that the Plasmodium falciparum-infected red blood cells (RBCs) are about 3 to 10 times stiffer than the normal RBCs, depending on the stage of parasite growth. Therefore, flow velocities of stiffer (infected) and softer (normal) RBCs can be easily distinguished in a simple fluidic channel using RPT.

Pratap Mukhopadhyaya from Wobble Base Bioresearch Pvt. Ltd. in India will develop a glucometer to detect HIV RNA. The existing major methodologies for viral load quantitation require sophisticated infrastructure and reagents that generate high priced tests (>50 USD per test) that are often not feasible for use in resource limited settings. The new assay involves making an HIV cDNA-DNA-invertase complex, which is added to sucrose solution to generate glucose through hydrolysis by the invertase enzyme that is detected using the glucometer.

Studies show that seasonal influenza in Ceará, in the Northeast region of Brazil, occurs 2 to 3 months earlier than in the South and Southeast, which guides the national calendar of vaccination. By using data science approaches, the study will test if Brazil's current national policy targeting vaccination only during the months of April and May inadequately protects against the harmful maternal-fetal effects of influenza in the Semi-Arid and northern regions of Brazil. If the hypothesis confirms, the study has the potential to change policy and modify the vaccination calendar.

The project will develop a cellulose filter containing immobilized DNA aptamers, molecules that bind to a specific target molecule, that act as specific and high affinity probes for the uptake and retention of antibiotic molecules present in effluents. Nowadays, the removal of antibiotic residues from effluents is mainly based on chemical processes and physical methods that require expensive technologies and costly maintenance. The success of this project will represent a wastewater treatment option that is low-cost and environment-friendly.

The project aims to monitor AMR in microorganisms of the urinary tract and correlate it with the genetic determinants of resistance in animal enterobacteria. The study results will be disseminated in order to inform potential changes to guidelines regarding selection of the appropriate antimicrobials first-line treatment for urinary tract infections (UTI).

This project will test a sustainable solar oxidation system as a way to remove antibiotic resistant bacteria from wastewater. The hypothesis is that this technology can enable the inactivation of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the elimination of antibiotic resistant genes from effluents in Brazil.

Bacterial plasmids are genetic elements that can carry genes for antibiotic resistance from one bacteria to another acting as "messengers". Plasmid transfers contribute to the appearance of multidrug resistant bacteria. This project aims to use a "kill the messenger, not the bacteria" approach to tackle the problem of increasing antibiotic resistance. The goal is to test the elimination of plasmids carrying genes for antimicrobial resistance.