From waste water surveillance to open-source bioinformatics, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced 10 projects that will receive about $2 million in the first round of grants towards improving pathogen genomic surveillance and understanding disease threats.
This includes India’s Ashoka University, International Foundation for Research and Education, and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR)‘s “Quantitative mapping of environmental to clinical AMR via DNA barcoding” project, according to a WHO note.
The fund was established by the International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) to support partners from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to build their capacities in pathogen genomic analysis, it added. The technology involved analysis of “the genetic code of viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing organisms to understand, in conjunction with other data, how easily they spread, and how sick they can make people,” it explained. And the data allowed scientists and public health teams to track and respond to infectious disease threats, support development of vaccines and treatments, and help countries in quick decision-making, the note said.
The fund is hosted by the United Nations Foundation and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and Wellcome. A second round of the funds will be made available to IPSN members in 2025. (The IPSN is a global network of pathogen genomic actors brought together by the WHO Pandemic Hub, to work on pathogen genomics and improve public health decision-making.)
“The IPSN catalytic grant fund recipients will accelerate the benefits of pathogen genomic surveillance in LMI settings, as well as explore new applications for genomic surveillance, such as wastewater surveillance,” said Manisha Bhinge, Vice President of the Health Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. “Pandemics and epidemics continue to be a global threat, further amplified by climate change. There is urgent need for equitable access to these tools and capabilities to protect lives in vulnerable communities,” she added.
Tailored locally
Giving details of the recipients, the note gave the example of the American University of Beirut, that will use wastewater surveillance to study how diseases spread in refugee populations, helping ensure that people quickly receive the care they need in migration settings. Another grantee, the Pasteur Institute of Laos, will use the funding to develop new methods to track avian flu in live-bird markets, a setting that is often overlooked, it added. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will use its funding to develop an open-source bioinformatics tool that can be used to conduct offline analyses. The tool will be piloted in Latin America with potential for global use, especially in low-resource settings, it said. Other fund recipients were from Sri Lanka, Laos, Rwanda, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Angola.
“These projects, developed in-country and tailored to local priorities, will generate new insights, knowledge and evidence that will help track global pathogen trends and inform evidence-based decisions to implement effective interventions” said Titus Divala, Wellcome’s Interim Head of Epidemics and Epidemiology.
“SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent regional disease outbreaks have underscored the importance of access to genomic surveillance tools in all countries,” added Simon Harris of the Gates Foundation.