On Aug. 27, 2020, scientists at Scripps Research announced they were partnering with peers in the U.S. and West Africa, a region of the world where infectious diseases are a high burden on public health.

The five-year grant, awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will establish the West African Emerging Infectious Disease Research Center, bringing together clinicians, epidemiologists, bioinformaticians and biologists from the United States, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal. The center builds on more than a decade of collaboration and experience establishing research infrastructure and scientific expertise in West Africa. 

The team will focus on emerging pathogens that pose the highest risk to national security and public health. These include SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the Ebola and Lassa viruses. More broadly, the scientists will concentrate on known and novel RNA viruses, for which surveillance gaps can be widespread. In addition, through technology development, training, and improved scientific and administrative infrastructure, the team will work to mitigate future pandemic threats. 

As COVID-19 has shown, when local, national and international responders are caught off guard, local outbreaks can rapidly escalate into global pandemics. To effectively respond to new viral threats, investments in local research infrastructure—including enhanced diagnostic capacity, pathogen discovery and surveillance—is needed. 

The newly funded center aims to address these key areas by designing and implementing novel field-deployable diagnostic tests, expanding resources for virus sequencing and pathogen-specific assays. The team will also develop frameworks for rapidly sharing genomic, clinical and epidemiological data.