US-Egypt Cooperative Research: Development and Evaluation of Various Novel Probes to Detect Hepatitis C Virus (HCV)

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Description: This award is for support of a cooperative project by Dr. Said A. Goueli, Team leader of Technology Development at Promega Corporation, in Madison, Wisconsin, and Dr. Mostafa Kamel El Awady, Chairman, Dept. of Human Genetics at the National Research Center (NRC) in Cairo, Egypt, and Acting Director of the Medical Biotechnology Program at the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology research Institute, Mubarak City, Alexandria, Egypt. The two scientists plan to synthesize distinct peptides, and generate antigen-specific polyclonal antibodies that are useful in detecting the presence of virus in Hepatitis C Virus (HCV)-infected population using ELISA-based system. The system to be developed will be less sensitive to variations in hygienic conditions and fluctuations in handling procedures, and thus more useful in the environment in less developed countries. The specific aims in this project are : develop in-house an ELISA-based assay to screen the general HCV-infected population. This is to be validated against reference kits commercially available and against the performance of kits base on RT-PCR technology; and develop in-house RT-PCR kit for subtyping the general HCV-infected population, and validating the results against reference kits. Scope: This project will involve two laboratories with complementary capabilities to conduct research in an important field for both countries. Most of the research work will be conducted by Dr. El Awady's team, with US participation through a visit by Dr. Goueli to Egypt, and visits by the Egyptian scientist to Goueli's laboratory in Wisconsin. This proposal meets INT objective of supporting US-foreign collaboration in areas of mutual benefit. The project was generated as a result of a workshop on biotechnology organized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Egyptian Government. NIH was involved in the evaluation of the project and in recommending its support. This project is being supported under the US-Egypt Joint Fund Program, administered by the US Department of State, which provides grants to scientists and engineers in both countries to carry out cooperative activities.