Description du projet
Méthode de dépistage de masse pour lutter contre les pandémies
Les conséquences de la pandémie de SARS-CoV-2 ont mis en évidence la nécessité d’améliorer la préparation à de futures épidémies d’agents pathogènes. Pour contenir la transmission des agents pathogènes, une stratégie de dépistage à grande échelle doit être déployée dès que possible et jusqu’à ce que des thérapies et des vaccins soient disponibles. Le projet PCR 4 ALL, financé par l’UE, soutient la réaction en chaîne par polymérase (PCR) en tant que méthode de première ligne idéale et vise à accroître sa capacité tout en réduisant son coût. Un test de diagnostic par PCR utilise le génome de l’agent pathogène et peut être facilement conçu. Le consortium propose de démontrer la faisabilité technique de la réalisation de 100 000 tests par jour et l’utilité de cette stratégie dans la lutte contre les pandémies.
Objectif
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).
Champ scientifique
- 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
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinateur
3000 Leuven
Belgique