Uganda International Center for Excellence in Research

National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Emerging/re-emerging zoonotic diseases are a major global health problem. Linking comprehensive pathogen surveillance of arthropod/vector populations in Uganda with public health surveillance at the regional and international level will make an important contribution to human and animal health in East Africa and the One World One Health concept in general. There will be a focus on rodent- and tick-borne pathogens potentially causing disease in humans, wildlife, and livestock. A more comprehensive understanding of the ecology of known and unknown rodent-borne zoonotic pathogens is essential for a risk assessment for local and global human and animal health. The establishment of emerging/re-emerging virus program on the campus of the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), Entebbe, Uganda is ongoing. We have procured most of the necessary equipment for the UVRI site; further equipment will be purchased when needed. Over the previous and current funding period we have refined molecular and serological detection assays for several pathogens including arenaviruses, bunyaviruses, coronaviruses filoviruses, and flaviviruses. In this fiscal year, efforts for the Uganda ICER site have been directed towards renovation and establishment of the laboratory at UVRI to support field studies. Renovations have been made to the electrical, plumbing, HVAC systems of the research space and construction of a sample receiving room for processing of potentially infectious samples. In addition to renovation of the physical space, we have purchased laboratory equipment such as two class II biosafety cabinets, a -80 and -20C freezer, RO/DI water system, benchtop centrifuges and ELISA plate washer. We have also purchased a class III glove-box type biosafety cabinet that will permit us to safely process samples potentially containing pathogens such as arenaviruses, bunyaviruses, coronaviruses filoviruses, and flaviviruses. The renovations are largely complete with an official opening scheduled for mid-October 2022. We have established a collaboration with Dr. Charles Ndawula, Uganda National Agricultural Research Organization to begin a study collecting samples from insect vectors, rodents and livestock at rural farms in Uganda. Our initial focus will be on surveilling for ticks, prevalence of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) within sampled ticks and prevalence of CCHFV infection in livestock in the rural parts of Uganda and the transboundary region between Uganda and Kenya. These studies will provide a foundation to support planned human surveillance studies to assess exposure to these emerging pathogens in these populations. We have also established a collaboration with Dr. Steve Reynolds, who has an extensive human surveillance project focused on HIV, and we will screen his cohort samples for exposure to emerging pathogens as well. Our overall goal is to gain an understanding of pathogen prevalence and incidence in rural Uganda to help identify public health threats, direct limited public health resources and improve diagnostic capacity at local institutions to improve health outcomes. We continue to advance our molecular and serological assays that will be deployed to Uganda as soon as the lab space at UVRI is available and functional (Lombe et al., Sci Rep 2021). We have developed multiplex qRT-PCR assays for the screening of tick, mosquito, rodent and livestock samples for pathogens of interest along with internal housekeeping genes for internal controls (Hawman et al., unpublished). We have also developed serological assays to measure antibody responses to various pathogens that will be utilized in Uganda (Lombe et al., Sci Rep 2021; Hawman et al., unpublished). At RML we continue to advance vaccine platforms for CCHFV (Hawman et al., Nat Microbiol 2021; Leventhal et al., eBioMed 2022) and other pathogens endemic in these regions. We have developed an immunocompetent mouse model for CCHFV (Hawman et al., eLife 2021) and are currently using this mouse model along with the established non-human primate model to evaluate countermeasures for CCHFV.