RFA-GH-21-006, Establishing the Southeast Asia Serological Surveillance Network (SASSNet) for Emergent, Endemic, and Vaccine-Preventable Infections

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Project Summary The project aims to establish the Southeast Asian Serological Surveillance Network (SASSNet) and operations in Indonesia and Viet Nam. The Network will apply optimized and validated serological sampling, analysis, and reporting of exposures to emerging and endemic neglected tropical infectious diseases of regional importance. The project leverages both robotic ELISA and Luminex multiplex high throughput platforms in order to efficiently and sustainably surveil several dozen infections/vaccinations. Sampling strategy is the pragmatic approach of age-stratified anonymized residual blood specimens from networks of 25 hospitals in Indonesia and 20 in Viet Nam. The project joins academic research partners from the University of Oxford’s clinical research units in Indonesia and Viet Nam with researchers within the respective Ministry of Health in both nations. The first year of effort focuses exclusively on serological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 through 3 distinct workstreams: 1) establishing routine national serological surveillance by ELISA; 2) cross-sectional surveys for exposure to SARS-CoV at selected sites; and 3) following two longitudinal cohorts for serological assessment by ELISA over a 1-year period, where enrollment in one cohort immediately follows qPCR positivity for SARS-CoV-2, and in the other immediately follows vaccination against COVID-19. Year 1 will also see the optimizing and validation of a multiplex Luminex assay for six distinct SARS-CoV-2 antigenic targets and three distinct immunoglobulins (A, M, and G), along with Spike S1 and Spike N proteins of MERS-CoV, and four seasonal coronaviruses. The same multiplex assay will later include eight emerging infections (e.g. Nipah, Zika, and Japanese encephalitis viruses), neglected tropical infections (e.g., Dengue, malaria, filariasis, leprosy, and intestinal helminthiases), and vaccine-preventable infections (e.g. measles, diphtheria, and tetanus). That multiplex serological assay will constitute the basis of routine national serological surveillance, and the project aims to build that capacity within Ministry of Health facilities in Indonesia and Viet Nam, and to turn those facilities over to the respective authorities at the end of the 5- year life of the project.