Helping to beat neglected tropical diseases with open research
| 25 January, 2023 | admin |
World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day has been marked on 30 January each year since its announcement in 2019.
The day is dedicated to bringing together civil society advocates, community leaders, global health experts, policymakers, funders, and more, to secure financial investment in programs, mobilize global action, and ultimately, beat neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
This World NTD Day, we’re exploring the impact of NTDs around the world, how continued research can help support the global NTD agenda, and some of the cutting-edge open access NTD work published with Wellcome Open Research.
An introduction to NTDs and global NTD goals
NTDs are a group of preventable and treatable diseases that have historically been neglected from global health policies. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined 20 diverse conditions as NTDs, which are caused by various pathogens and are often vector-borne.
It’s estimated that almost all countries are endemic for at least one NTD and over 1.7 billion people are affected by NTDs every year, with NTDs causing approximately 200,000 deaths annually. The social and economic effects of NTDs are extremely wide-ranging, including causing disability, stigmatization, social exclusion and discrimination, loss of productivity, and reduced socioeconomic and educational opportunities.
Being predominantly found in tropical areas with poor access to clean water, sanitation, and poor-quality healthcare, NTDs disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable communities, leading to a cycle of poverty.
The World Health Organisation has established a 2021 – 2030 NTD Roadmap to tackle NTDs, with targets including a 90% reduction in the number of people requiring NTD treatments; a 75% reduction in disability-adjusted life years (DALY); the elimination of at least one NTD from 100 countries; and the eradication of the dracunculiasis and yaws diseases.
Open research and neglected tropical diseases
Continued investment into NTD research and sharing findings openly will be fundamental to meeting these targets.
Reducing the risk and impact of escalating infectious diseases, including neglected tropical diseases, forms one of Wellcome’s four strategic research pillars, with Wellcome’s work in snakebite envenoming expected to form a model for other NTDs.
As part of delivering this vision, Wellcome is committed to publishing Wellcome-funded NTD research openly and transparently via Wellcome Open Research.
How can open research help NTD researchers?
Publishing all research outputs openly and transparently – from data and code to methods and Study Protocols – and publishing all research without restriction, including null or negative results, has many benefits for NTD researchers, including:
- Improving awareness of, and access to, the latest NTD methods, analyses, and conclusions.
- Enabling better reproducibility of results and allowing others to build on NTD research more easily and quickly.
- Reducing unnecessary repetition of previous studies or methods and placing focus on conducting new, value driven NTD research.
- Enabling deeper collaboration between researchers and stakeholders outside of the scientific community, including policymakers and NGOs, ensuring NTD research has a real-world impact.
Neglected tropical diseases research on Wellcome Open Research
A number of Wellcome-funded researchers in the NTD community have already published their findings open access with Wellcome Open Research.
You can discover some of the NTD insights on Wellcome Open Research below.
Large CRISPR-Cas-induced deletions in the oxamniquine resistance locus of the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni
At least 230 million people worldwide required preventative treatment for schistosomiasis in 2019, which is an acute and chronic disease caused by Schistosoma worms.
A Research Article from Sankaranarayanan et al., with almost 1,200 views since its publication, highlights that genome sequences for several Schistosoma species are available, including a high-quality annotated reference for Schistosoma mansoni, but there is a need to develop a reliable toolkit to translate these data into biological insights and targets for intervention.
As part of developing this toolkit, the study demonstrates CRISPR-Cas9 for the first time in Schistosoma mansoni to produce somatic mutations.
A clinical study to optimise a sand fly biting protocol for use in a controlled human infection model of cutaneous leishmaniasis (the FLYBITE study)
Controlled human infection models (CHIM) – where healthy participants are deliberately infected with the pathogen of interest, observed, and treated after the observation period has ended – have been proposed as a method to evaluate new vaccines and therapies efficiently and cost-effectively for diseases where there is an urgent need for a vaccine.
In order to develop an effective CHIM for leishmaniasis, a parasitical disease transmitted by infected female phlebotomine sandflies, an efficient protocol that allows sandflies to bite human volunteers safely is needed.
In this Research Article with over 900 views since publication, Parkash et al. outline a clinical study to optimize a sand fly biting protocol in order to refine the development of a CHIM for cutaneous leishmaniasis.
TRUE-1: Trial of Repurposed Unithiol for snakebite Envenoming phase 1 (safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in healthy Kenyan adults)
Snakebike envenoming (poisoning from snakebites) was added to the WHO’s NTD list in 2017 due to its significant global impact – up to 138,000 people die each year from snake bites, and snake bites cause around three times as many amputations and other disabilities annually.
With only one treatment available, which is produced at extremely high cost and without proper regulation in many cases, this Study Protocol from Abouyannis et al. sets out a phase I clinical trial for a new treatment.
The study will assess the safe use of Unithiol, a chelating agent which is routinely used to treat heavy metal poisoning, to combat zinc-dependent snake venom metalloproteinases, which are one of the most harmful components of viper venoms.
Publish your own NTD research today
If you’re a Wellcome-funded researcher conducting research in neglected tropical diseases, you can publish your findings for free with Wellcome Open Research.