Geneva University extends diagnostics deal with FIND

Funding

The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) has signed a three year funding agreement with University of Geneva for a research programme that is expected to pave the way for the development of a new, safe, accurate and low-cost test that will help doctors to better treat – and cure – sleeping sickness. The funding for the research group, led by Jean-Charles Sanchez, is CHF 462,000 (€310,700) in the first year, with budgets for subsequent years to be negotiated.

Human African trypanosomiasis, more commonly known as sleeping sickness, is a parasitic disease that is transmitted to humans through the bite of a tsetse fly. “More than 60 million people are at risk of this disease which, if untreated, invariably leads to death,” said Giorgio Roscigno, Executive Director of FIND. “At the moment, treatment is severely hampered by difficulties in determining whether a patient is at stage 1 or stage 2 of the disease. Stage 2 patients need appropriate treatment, but the drugs in use are highly toxic and kill around 8 per cent of patients. Prescription of these drugs should be guided by accurate determination of the stage of the disease.”

The University of Geneva researchers, working with partners at Makerere University in Uganda, and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium, have made progress in identifying biomarkers in patients' cerebrospinal fluid that indicate the stage of the disease. The extended funding will allow further studies to assess if this can be applied to the development of a simple test, similar to a home pregnancy test, which can be readily used in countries throughout Africa, in clinics and hospitals with the most basic resources.

The development of such a simple test would represent a huge advance on the present situation. Currently, patients have to undergo a lumbar puncture. This is a painful procedure that requires a skilled health worker, carries with it the risk of infection, and does not always yield accurate results.

“Making breakthroughs in the lab, which can later save lives, is the dream of any researcher,” said Sanchez. “There is a real urgency to our current work, and our collaboration with FIND and colleagues in Uganda and Belgium ensures that the progress we make here in Geneva will have an impact on one of the most neglected poverty-related diseases of our time.” Sanchez has been working since 1989 in the field of proteomics and has been the head of the Biomedical Proteomics Research Group of the Faculty of Medicine at Geneva since 1995. The activities in his group cover the discovery of biomarkers associated to brain disorders and impaired insulin secretion.