2019 Tropical Infectious Diseases

Gordon Research Conferences, East Greenwich RI

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary Tropical Infectious Diseases (TIDs) effect on the order of one billion people and contribute to significant political, social and economic instability in developing countries. While medically diverse, TIDs share features that allow them to persist under conditions of poverty, resulting in clustering and overlap of different diseases. Many of these diseases are zoonotic in nature or are vector-borne. Traditional control measures have proven insufficient in eliminating, or even controlling, the devastating effects of tropical diseases and furthermore have been exacerbated by emerging resistance to the drugs and insecticides used. Recent technical advances however have opened unique opportunities to develop more effective control strategies. However, other diseases, such as those caused by arboviruses, including dengue and chikungunya, have been expanding their geographic range and are threatening the well-being of large populations living in temperate climates. Genomic analysis, genetic manipulation and functional studies of infectious pathogens, their invertebrate and vertebrate hosts, have converged to generate a substantial body of information critical to understand processes such as pathogen transmission, invasion, immune evasion, emergence of resistance and immunopathology and vaccine efficacy. By gathering leading scientists with complementary expertise and global health practitioners, this conference is designed to serve as a catalyst for the development of new approaches to fight TIDs. The GRS will provide a comfortable forum for the TID trainees and junior scientists to build their own community and to interact with the leaders of the TID field. This proposal requests partial support from the NIH for a meeting on ?Tropical Infectious Diseases: from Innovation to Global Health Solutions? as part of the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and Seminar (GRS) series to be held in Galveston, Texas, March 23-29, 2019. The broad and long-term goal of the conference is to increase our understanding of host-pathogen-vector-environment interactions with the aim of developing new insights and tools for controlling Tropical Infectious Diseases (TIDs). The specific aims of this meeting are to convene approximately 38 speakers representing critical areas of tropical disease research and with a total of 150 participants for a seven-day conference in a relatively isolated, comfortable setting. The GRC on TIDs provides a forum that brings together multidisciplinary members of the international research community on tropical infectious diseases. The intent is to promote discussions from basic to applied questions and to generate ?cross-fertilization? among different specialties and fields of knowledge while establishing a community of scientists interested in TIDs.