Infectious Disease

Between 60–80 % of food in most developing countries is produced by women; thus, women play a critical role in household food security. Intensive pork production is key to sustained food security and it is therefore critical to address diseases that lead to reduced pork production. As men increasingly seek alternative employment in urban areas, raising of livestock for sale (e.g., pigs) has fallen to women.

A One Health approach to Japanese encephalitis in Bangladesh: Vaccinating pigs to save human lives

Problem: Toxoplasma gondii is the cause of toxoplasmosis in man and animals. To date, no vaccine is available in human to control the disease. In this project, a multiprotein vaccine will be developed using ROP18, SAG1 and AMA1. The recombinant proteins will be encapsulated in nanoparticles and administrated intranasally in mice. Future Perspectives: To develop vaccine strategy in sheep and humans because one third of our earth's population is infected with toxoplasmosis, and it causes abortions in sheep.

Reliable and affordable source of vaccines for developing countries are critical. This technology can substantially improve vaccine yields obtained from cell cultures and propose to apply it to make influenza vaccines with the help of strategic partners in Canada and in developing countries"

A lack of diagnostic tools and skills in Tanzanian health facilities are blamed for widespread malaria misdiagnosis, which fails the patient's need, wastes precious resources and contributes to drug resistance. As many as 45% of arboviral infections in the country are misdiagnosed as malaria.  Automatically updated local estimates of the relative transmission risk of malaria and arboviral infections, delivered via mobile phone text messages to rural health workers, will help to better inform clinical diagnoses.

We have developed an innovative approach to diagnose typhoid and other common infections in settings without electricity, sophisticated equipment or trained laboratory personnel, to enable quality patient care in resource-limited settings.

With global efforts to eliminate schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiases by chemotherapy, more suitable diagnostic tests that are relatively simple and rapid to perform, inexpensive, easy to adapt for field use and with throughput potential are needed to support disease control efforts. This project if successful will ensure that cases are detected rapidly and more accurately, efficacy of chemotherapy is evaluated efficiently and more precisely, and epidemiological surveillance of infection is done more reliably in Kenya, an endemic area.

The idea is to stop schistosomiasis (affecting 790 million people) using a combination of chemotherapy and parasite extinction, latter to be accomplished through restoring the population of indigenous freshwater prawns to rural waterways in endemic regions of Africa. These prawns are natural predators of aquatic snails that harbor schistosomiasis. Follow Nicolas Jouanard on Twitter @ProjetCrevette"

We plan to develop a rapid and sensitive nano-immunosensor for the detection of Bilharzia. This will be an innovative nano-kit suitable for rapid, high-throughput screening and analyzing urine samples for Bilharzia.

We are implementing research to control filariasis vector, Culex quinquefasciatus, using biolarvicides and oviposition attractants in Mafia, Tanzania. Our research will utilize pheromones to attract Culex quinquefasciatus to lay eggs in biolarvicides treated water bodies to control the vector and accelerates lymphatic filariasis elimination.