Infectious Disease

Stephen Oliver and Elizabeth Bilsland at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom will develop a yeast-based screen to identify compounds inhibiting selected enzymes from parasitic filarial worms, which cause several common and debilitating diseases. Candidate enzymes as potential antifilarial drug targets will be selected based on their importance specifically in the adult stages of the parasite life cycle, against which current drugs are ineffective.

Tae Seok Moon from Washington University in the U.S. will develop a bacterial-based strategy to block the transmission of soil-transmitted helminth infections (intestinal worms), which occurs via parasite eggs present in human feces. They will engineer consumable probiotic bacteria that are designed to sense when they are excreted from the body and to subsequently release toxic substances designed to kill the parasite eggs in order to prevent disease transmission.

Edward Mitre and his team at the Uniformed Services University in the U.S. will develop a method for the long-term maintenance of parasitic Roundworms (filariae) in cell-free culture. Human filariae cause substantial morbidity worldwide, but current therapies are inefficient or cause harmful side effects. Additionally, the inability to maintain filariae in vitro has hampered screening efforts to identify new drugs.

Aaron Maule of Queen's University Belfast in the United Kingdom will develop food crops expressing microRNAs that, upon ingestion by humans, can be used to target and kill parasitic worms and the mosquitos that transmit them. Plant microRNAs can survive the digestion process and are detected in human blood following consumption. Therefore, they may also be encountered by blood-borne parasitic worms and by the blood-eating insects that transmit them, which cause widespread disease. He will select candidate microRNAs and test their activity using rodent infection models.

Paul McVeigh from Queen's University of Belfast in the United Kingdom will develop a diagnostic for filarial infections, which are caused by parasitic nematodes (roundworms) and can cause severe pain and disability. He will screen serum samples from filariasis patients to identify circulating microRNAs associated with the presence specifically of adult parasitic nematodes (macrofilariae) as candidate diagnostic biomarkers.

Jason Andrews and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. have developed a low-cost handheld device that allows rapid and quantitative detection of Loa loa helminthic parasites in the bloodstream by fluorescent photometry. Quantitative detection is important because individuals with high levels of Loa loa can be fatally sensitive to a widely administered drug used to treat another common parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulans. Conventional detection by microscopy is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and often impractical in the field.

Stephen Sowerby of the University of Otago in New Zealand has developed a quantitative cell-phone-based diagnostic and will test its ability to detect and monitor soil-transmitted helminth infections (intestinal worms), which are the most common infections worldwide. Quantitative monitoring of infection is crucial for evaluating therapeutic agents to combat the increase in drug resistant parasites.

Michael K. Chan of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in China and his collaborators will use dawadawa, a staple food in western Africa, as the basis of a novel therapeutic for treating and preventing multiple parasitic worm (helminthic) infections, which are prevelant in developing countries. Dawadawa can be produced by fermenting soyabeans with Bacillus bacteria. By engineering Bacillus to produce parasite-killing (antihelminth) proteins, they can make a staple food with therapeutic properties at low cost.

Bebe Sylla and a team at American Friends of Guinea in the U.S. will use Short Message Service (SMS) and mobile laboratory technologies in rural Guinea to improve the identification of and response to neglected tropical diseases. Rapid and accurate response to the emergence of parasitic infections is critical for reducing transmission cycles, but particularly difficult in rural areas.

Andrew Steckl and Giovanni Pauletti of the University of Cincinnati in the U.S. will develop a paper-based urine test for the rapid non-invasive detection of the filarial Roundworm Loa loa, which causes the painful skin and eye disease loaisis, commonly found in western and central Africa. Current diagnostic approaches are invasive, involving visual detection of larvae in tissue or blood samples. The approach here utilizes the potential effect of parasite-released hormones found in the urine of infected individuals on the viscosity of animal blood spotted onto filter paper.