Integrated serological surveillance of malaria and mosquito transmitted viruses

Global warming is predicted to substantially increase the burden of mosquito transmitted infections, such as malaria and dengue, chikungunya, and Zika virus, which currently affect more than 5 billion people worldwide who live at risk of severe acute and chronic illness.

For effective prevention and control, these diseases must be targeted together but this requires integrated surveillance strategies which are currently lacking.This project aims to help combat the devastating effects of mosquito transmitted infections by developing antibody-based tools to monitor transmission of a range of diseases by analysis of multiple antibody responses in a single blood-sample.

We will establish new multiplex antibody assays and apply innovative data analysis methods, which extract interpretable information from multiplex assay data, to study three longitudinal cohorts in malaria and arbovirus endemic sites in Senegal, Peru, and Cambodia (n=1000 at each site).

We will validate the performance of newly identified serological markers of recent malaria exposure and develop a new platform for serological surveillance of 10 mosquito transmitted viruses by characterising the kinetics of antibody responses and by identifying serological markers that provide information about disease transmission.This ambitious interdisciplinary project has the opportunity substantially impact the control of mosquito transmitted diseases by establishing new, innovative and cost-effective surveillance tools.