Infectious Disease

Howard Ochman of the University of Texas in the U.S. will develop an approach to identify bacteria that can spread antibiotic resistance genes to other bacteria and harm human health. Most methods for monitoring antibiotic resistance are used once resistance has occurred. Here they will measure the capacity for developing resistance, which should help better evaluate how antibiotic resistance persists, spreads and circulates on a global scale.

Xun Suo of China Agricultural University in China will develop a rabbit model of cryptosporidiosis that mimics the human disease, which presents as severe diarrhea particularly in young children, to help identify new treatments. Current animal models of infection by the parasite Cryptosporidium are suboptimal: mice are not naturally infected, while pigs and calves can be infected but are expensive and more difficult to manage, and none show the same symptoms as humans. Rabbits are naturally infected by Cryptosporidium and display human-related symptoms.

Anastasios Tsaousis of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom will build a screening platform to identify drugs that can be used to treat diarrhea caused by the parasite Cryptosporidium, which is the second major cause of death in children under five years old in developing countries. There are currently no effective drugs for treating Cryptosporidium, largely because it cannot easily be grown in the laboratory making it difficult to study and test for new drugs.

William Witola of the University of Illinois in the U.S. will help develop new drugs for treating children infected with the protozoa Cryptosporidium by using a gene knockdown approach to evaluate candidate drug targets. Found in contaminated water, Cryptosporidium is the second most common cause of potentially lethal diarrhea in young children in developing countries. There are no safe and effective drugs available due largely to the lack of genetic tools for studying Cryptosporidium in the laboratory.

Christopher Huston of the University of Vermont in the U.S. will screen for compounds that inhibit differentiation of Cryptosporidium in culture in vitro. Lack of a continuous in vitro culture system impedes drug development for Cryptosporidium, which causes substantial morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Cryptosporidium infects intestinal cell lines but it quickly differentiates from replicating asexual to non-replicating sexual forms.

Arash Shaban-Nejad of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in the U.S. will develop an analytic framework to help integrate dynamic surveillance data from multiple sources and health systems to support decision making for malaria elimination. Data on malaria is currently scattered in different formats across diverse organizations, making it difficult to access and use. An ontology is a web-based method that explicitly defines specific concepts using logical rules and constraints, and can be used to capture and combine information from numerous sources into a formal framework.

Marcos Barreto of Universidade Federal da Bahia in Brazil will build a platform that routinely integrates surveillance data from malaria with socioeconomic and health care data, and also provides open access and support for data analysis and mining. To monitor the spread of malaria in a populous country like Brazil requires an open access surveillance system that can incorporate multiple types of data to support elimination efforts.

Fasséli Coulibaly of Monash University in Australia will design a vaccine platform based on protein crystals (MicroCubes) produced by insect viruses to produce new and more potent vaccines with increased stability, obviating the need for refrigerated storage. The crystal structure will be engineered to present multiple antigens that will then be tested for their ability to induce an effective immune response.

Timothy Geary at McGill University in Canada proposed screening chemicals derived from the biological diversity found in Africa to identify lead compounds for the development of drugs to treat infections caused by parasitic nematode worms. In this project's Phase I research, Dr. Geary established drug discovery centers at the Universities of Botswana and Cape Town, South Africa to screen for compounds that target a nematode family of peptidergic G Protein-coupled receptors. In Phase II, the team is expanding the screening efforts.

Timothy Geary at McGill University in Canada proposed screening chemicals derived from the biological diversity found in Africa to identify lead compounds for the development of drugs to treat infections caused by parasitic nematode worms. In this project's Phase I research, Dr. Geary established drug discovery centers at the Universities of Botswana and Cape Town, South Africa to screen for compounds that target a nematode family of peptidergic G Protein-coupled receptors. In Phase II, the team is expanding the screening efforts.