Projektbeschreibung
Verfahren für Reihenuntersuchungen bei Pandemien
Die Nachwehen der SARS-CoV-2-Pandemie haben die Notwendigkeit einer verbesserten Vorsorge gegenüber zukünftigen Krankheitsausbrüchen verdeutlicht. Um die Übertragung von Krankheitserregern einzudämmen, und bis Therapien und Impfstoffe zur Verfügung stehen, muss so schnell wie möglich eine großangelegte Teststrategie verfolgt werden. Das EU-finanzierte Projekt PCR-4-ALL unterstützt die Polymerasekettenreaktion (PCR) als ideale Methode an vorderster Linie und zielt darauf ab, die Testkapazität zu erhöhen und gleichzeitig die Kosten zu senken. Ein der Diagnose dienender PCR-Assay nutzt das Genom des Pathogens und kann problemlos entworfen werden. Das Gemeinschaftsunternehmen schlägt vor, die technische Realisierbarkeit der Durchführung von 100 000 Tests pro Tag sowie den Nutzen dieser Strategie im Kampf gegen Pandemien zu demonstrieren.
Ziel
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only affected our health, but also our lifestyles and our economies. Given its high non-symptomatic transmissibility, to stop a pandemic-causing pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 early on its tracks without needing to resort to economy-damaging measures, would have required a mass testing strategy very early on: according to some estimates up to 10% of a nation’s population should have been tested on a daily basis to achieve this. Given the exponential growth tendency of pandemic-causing respiratory viruses, as soon as such pathogen is identified a large-scale testing campaign should immediate be deployed (a strategy adopted successfully in very densely populated areas of China). And given the long periods required to develop other pandemic-fighting strategies (i.e. such as vaccines and quick diagnostic tests), PCR-based mass testing could be the ideal front line of defense, since it can be developed in only a few weeks after decoding the genetic map of the pathogen. But although PCR testing capacity has greatly been increased worldwide, regularly testing large fractions of the population would still remain prohibitively costly with current technology.
The PCR-4-ALL consortium (combining expertise in diagnostics, high-throughput-screening, virology, disease modelling, econometrics and digital health platforms) will aim to demonstrate the technical feasibility of carrying out population-wide PCR testing by demonstrating a capacity of >10^5 tests in a single day and platform, in an extremely cost-effective manner (at least 2 orders of magnitude cheaper than currently). We will, furthermore, evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing this strategy as the main pandemic-fighting measure by assessing its ability to minimize, or even prevent, the need to implement other costly and partially ineffective measures (i.e. lockdowns and vaccination campaigns).
Wissenschaftliches Gebiet
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologypandemics
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusescoronaviruses
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsvaccines
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringmedical laboratory technologydiagnostic technologies
Schlüsselbegriffe
Programm/Programme
Aufforderung zur Vorschlagseinreichung
Andere Projekte für diesen Aufruf anzeigenFinanzierungsplan
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsKoordinator
3000 Leuven
Belgien