Dr. Eva Harris joins International collaborative effort to combat dengue and Zika worldwide
- 4 min. read ▪ Published
An international team launched a new research network to understand how dengue and zika spread, interact, and cause disease across Africa and Asia.
The new Dengue and Zika Immunology and Genomics Multi-Country Network (DeZi) is led by Dr. Nuno Faria of Imperial College London, along with Dr. Eva Harris of UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and other researchers worldwide.
The DeZi programme brings together leading research institutes and public health agencies in more than fifteen countries, with coordination through Imperial’s School of Public Health and the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. DeZi integrates genomics, serology, and modelling to reveal the burden, transmission, and evolution of dengue and Zika viruses and to translate findings into global and national policy.
By combining innovation with equitable partnerships, DeZi aims to accelerate the adoption of improved diagnostics, strengthen regional laboratory capacity and South-South collaborations, and enhance preparedness for future arboviral epidemics under a changing climate. The network’s open-access resources and policy engagement activities will support countries to integrate the surveillance of dengue, Zika, and other priority mosquito-borne viruses into routine national health systems.
The research network received £5.65 million ($7.37 million) core funding from a Wellcome Trust Infectious Disease Award. This was supplemented by £600,000 ($783,000) funding from Temasek and a £600,000 ($783,000) contribution from Singapore National Environment Agency‘s Environmental Health Institute through UNITEDengue.
Filling critical data gaps
Although dengue causes more than 100 million infections each year, and Zika’s explosive 2015–16 pandemic highlighted its devastating congenital effects, scientists still know little about how both viruses co-circulate in many tropical regions.
DeZi will deploy state-of-the-art serological assays, genomic sequencing, and antigenic mapping to reconstruct infection histories and track the evolution and transmission of viral lineages as close as possible to real time. Using harmonised datasets, DeZi researchers will model how immunity and viral evolution interact to shape future epidemic risk. The results will inform national and international stakeholders, including improved risk-assessment frameworks for dengue and Zika outbreaks and recommendations for Zika screening in pregnancy.
The network builds on long-standing collaborations in the Americas and expands them into Africa and Asia. Regional hubs in Kinshasa, Luanda, and Singapore will host in-country training, standardise laboratory protocols, and strengthen national surveillance systems. DeZi will also promote South-South collaborations between and within Africa, Asia, and the Americas, ensuring equitable sharing of data and resources and sustaining research capacity beyond the lifetime of the project.
“By benchmarking the assays and models we develop through DeZi using our longstanding cohort studies in Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Brazil that experienced the Zika pandemic in the context of endemic dengue, we can validate assays that distinguish dengue and Zika infections and model scenarios of emergence in our partner countries in Africa and Asia,” said Harris. “Further, by uniting datasets and expertise across continents, we can quantify how immunity and viral evolution interact over time and space.”
About DeZi
The DeZi project will run for five years. Partners include research institutions and public-health laboratories across Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, the Democratic Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, Kenya, Singapore, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, French Polynesia, India, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Brazil, working closely with UKHSA, Ministry of Health in Portugal, Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Yale University, WHO and networks such as Machine Learning & Global Health Network, UNITEDengue, CREID, and ARTIC2.0.
DeZi is led by Faria, alongside. Harris; Dr. Ng Lee Ching at the National Environment Agency, Singapore; Dr. Placide Mbala Kingebeni of the Institut National de Reserche Biomédicale, Democratic Republic of Congo; Jocelyne Vasconcelos of the Health Research Centre of Angola; Dr. Bireshwar Sinha of the Centre for Health Research and Development, Society for Applied Studies, India; and Dr. Eve Lackritz of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
“Our vision is to spearhead an international collaborative programme that links state-of-the-art research into effective policymaking, empowering local leadership and bringing together researchers, stakeholders and communities to address the growing challenge of arboviral threats,” said Faria.
“This network empowers laboratories and researchers in Africa to take a leading role in arbovirus genomics,” said Mbala Kingebeni, DeZi’s regional director for Africa.
