Funding
Bill and Melinda Gates FoundationGlobal Projects
COVID-19 diagnostics clearinghouse
Project overview
COVID-19 disease has upended all the scientific and social norms of our times. Diagnostic testing, or access to reliable test results are key to maintaining disease control and learn about the natural history of this disease. There are over 700 self-listed test kits offered by a diverse field of test producers, many of them may be very good reacting tests, many may be providing unreliable results. Our BMGF investment award is to serve as a clearinghouse for COVID-19 diagnostics, especially on the serology tests and to ensure quality test performance. We are also tasked to ensure that a collaborative biorepository framework is developed to assure quality curation of specimens and more timely access to planned evaluation panels critical for test validation, measuring effective therapeutics and determine correlates of vaccine protection.
Faculty team
May Chu, Molly Lamb, June Homdayjanakul, William Jon Windsor, Mary Moua, Olivia Pluss, Emily BarreraCollaborating team
Foundation for Innovative Diagnostics, World Health Organization, PATH, BMGF China Office, Africa CDCZika point of care diagnostics feasibility study
Project overview
While the global community diverts much-needed resources to COVID-19, routine arboviral disease surveillance efforts and other public health efforts can be negatively affected. This is why we believe that now is the opportune time to address and evaluate the integration of various point-of-care use cases for Zika and other arbovirus diseases for rapid test turnaround time and reduce resource needs to maintain surveillance and monitor potential Zika re-emergence. We have been selected by UNICEF to pilot a study using validated POC rapid tests in Africa, Southeast Asia sites, and collaborate with the Pan American Health Organization in Latin America sites. Our project’s objectives are to provide a scalable and sustainable framework for conducting operational feasibility studies, to assess the test kits usability and operationality in real-world settings and to generate data to assess the market value and adoption of the POC tests by the pilot countries.
Funding
UNICEFFaculty team
May Chu, Thomas Jaenisch, Molly Lamb, June Homdayjanakul, Daniel Olson, Mary Moua, Olivia PlussCollaborating team
Global Health Impact Group, European Viral Access-Global, University of Berline-Charité and pilot site partnersPersonal protective equipment decontamination and reuse
Project overview
The World Health Organization has tasked us to coordinate a study during unprecedented global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). Open Philanthropy has given us a gift for the purpose is allow for safe extended use of PPE in low resource settings. Our primary goal is to validate cheap and simple effective means to decontaminate SARS-COV2 and surrogate viruses while ensuring that the decontamination does not impair the critical integrity of the medical masks and respirators (N95/FFP2) that healthcare workers wear at the frontline caring for COVID-19 patients. We are also leading research on how to make a protective homemade mask for community use analyzing masks made by communities and countries where public mask use is mandated.
Funding
Open PhilanthropyFaculty team
May Chu, Molly Lamb, June Homdayjanakul, Mary MouaCollaborating team
Seattle Children’s Hospital, University of Washington, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Liege, George Washington University, Stanford University, 4C Air, BS International, Nelson Laboratory, Centexbel, Stryker Corporation, World Health OrganizationReconciliation of cohort data for infectious diseases (ReCoDID)
Project overview
This project is an ongoing EC-funded project coordinated by Thomas Jaenisch out of Heidelberg University Hospital. University of Colorado will be added as a partner. The focus of the project is on harmonization and data sharing for cohort data, using Arbovirus clinical observational data as pilot and for methods development. The European Commission asked the partners to add an additional work package on COVID-19 research, focusing on harmonization of COVID-19 cohort data and data sharing. The Center of Global Health will be involved in the harmonization of COVID-19 clinical data sets as well as seroprevalence data sets.
Funding
European Commission Horizon 2020 programmeFaculty team
Thomas Jaenisch, May Chu, Molly Lamb, Olivia Pluss, June Homdayjanakul