Novel biomarkers of rabies virus infection of the central nervous system

Summary

The United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 is to ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages’. One target is to ‘end the epidemic’ of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by 2030. Rabies is one of the 20 prioritized NTDs. It is an acute, rapidly progressive and fatal neurological disease caused by rabies virus (RABV) and related lyssaviruses. There is no treatment for the disease. Most rabies deaths are caused by infection with RABV transmitted from domestic dogs. Rabies transmitted by dogs is a disease of neglected populations in resource-poor areas. Rabies is endemic in Kenya, including in the Lake Victoria Basin where the partner institution is located. It is one of the top five priority zoonotic diseases in Kenya and the country has developed a strategic plan for the elimination of human deaths from rabies by 2030. The impact to which our project wishes to contribute is for all rabies patients to have access to early diagnosis and treatment. We aim to contribute to this impact through the anticipated outcome of our project, which is to characterise rabies as an acute infectious neurodegenerative disease, thus stimulating innovation in development of early diagnosis and treatment through interdisciplinary research spanning veterinary medicine, infectious disease and human neuroscience. Recent studies conducted in mouse models of rabies provide evidence that RABV infection of neurons triggers a process of neurodegeneration identical to that seen in several more common diseases of the nervous system. This opens the possibility for novel, innovative, interdisciplinary, and cross-cutting research into the development of tools for early diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of rabies. In this Short Initiative project, we will assess the validity of novel candidate biomarkers of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation for rabies in naturally-infected canine cases. We will create an interdisciplinary research group on neurodegenerative disease and provide short-term training to a PhD student at the partner institution. We will strengthen capacity for uptake of new knowledge by the partner institution and study communities. Through this short-term project, we will build a scientific collaboration among a diverse team of academics and researchers in Belgium, Kenya, St Kitts and South Africa focused on a specific SDG challenge, and strengthen the research capacity of the partner institution. 

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