Grants and Contracts Details
Description
The nature of the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved from a race to
develop an effective vaccine against a strain of SARS-CoV-2 that afflicted the elderly
disproportionately to a race to deliver that vaccination in an environment of shifting
variants of SARS-CoV-2. Disturbingly, the current variant (Delta) has overwhelmed
hospital systems and has driven a large number of children into acute care. Most
state and national governments are operating very low resolution clinical genomic
surveillance programs due to the great cost and complexity of full sequencing of
clinical swabs. Public heath agencies would benefit from a lower cost, higher scale
genomic screening approach to complement the clinical case-based methods. This
submission proposes a pilot project utilizing clinical genomic sequencing data in
conjunction with wastewater variant surveillance data to identify early warning
signals for new or emerging variant spread that could then serve as a template for
resource limited setting across the globe.
Vaneet Arora, M.D, MPH is Associate Director in Clinical Microbiology at the
University of Kentucky (UK) and also serves as the Medical Director of State Public
Health Laboratory. He will collaborate with University of Louisville Envirome Institute
to corroborate/overlay genomic data on variants from clinical specimens and
wastewater samples to anticipate/predict the emergence of newer variants. For the
prospective part of this study, as he analyzes the data coming out of the Genomic
Laboratory to assess the distribution, location, and proportions of known or new
variants/mutations of concern/interest employing GISAID, Pangolin lineages and
NextStrain builds, he, with assistance from his team at the State and UK will share
information on emerging, reemerging, or novel mutation or variants of
concern/interest with the collaborators at the UofL. Similarly, he will receive data on
mutations and putative variants of concern/interest identified in wastewater
surveillance that will enable identification of geographic locations for existing
sequencing data or additional targeted surveillance sequencing of clinical specimens
working with State, Regional and Local epidemiologists, and clinical labs.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 10/1/21 → 6/30/23 |
Funding
- University of Louisville: $49,292.00
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