Diagnosing neglected tropical diseases with REASSURED and sustainable point-of-care-tests

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) affect >1 billion people and cause 200,000 deaths, mostly in impoverished communities in low-income countries such as Congo and Ethiopia as well as in middle-income countries including Nigeria and Kenya.

NTDs receive disproportionally small amounts of research and investment but contribute to an immense social and economic burden resulting from social stigma, physical disabilities, disfigurement, blindness, discrimination, loss of social status, malnutrition, and impaired cognitive development.

This in turn drives the cycle of poverty by preventing individuals from leading productive lives, affecting families, communities, and whole countries.Availability of accurate, reliable and affordable diagnostics is critical in supporting prompt treatment choices, guiding population level public health decisions such as disease surveillance, verifying elimination or certifying eradication.Here we will carry out research into specific nucleic acid-based detection of NTDs, applying expanded genome mining to identify identical multi-repeat sequences (IMRS).

By combining this approach with easy-to-use extraction methods, on-chip isothermal amplification and visualization, we are proposing a pathway to highly sensitive, reliable, and, importantly, field-deployable testing for NTDs.

Furthermore, we are setting out to study sustainable materials for production of point-of-care devices to address the pollution challenges posed by single use plastics.