UK-Brazil Joint Centre for Arbovirus Discovery, Diagnosis, Genomics and Epidemiology (CADDE)

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Recently, Brazil has been affected by unexpected and explosive epidemics of insect-transmitted viruses (arboviruses), most notably Zika, chikungunya, dengue, and yellow fever viruses. The huge economic burden of the Zika epidemic in Brazil and the widespread presence of urban mosquitos in the country highlight an urgent need for accurate predictions of disease spread, particularly in large, densely populated regions. Our UK-Brazil Partnership (CADDE) will enhance and expand an excellent existing collaborations, with the aim of anticipating and controlling future epidemics of arboviruses in Brazil. It is our vision for CADDE to become a strategic centre of excellence for research in South America that focuses on providing timely analysis, based on genomic, epidemiological and geographic evidence, to anticipate and control transmission of arboviruses, today and in the future.. Our research questions include: 1) What arboviruses circulate in human, mosquito and reservoir populations in Brazil? 2) Where and how do arboviruses persist during non-epidemic periods? 3) What are the biological and medical implications of the genetic diversity of circulating arboviruses and of mutations in their genomes? 4) What factors control the transformation of a single introduction of a new arbovirus into human populations into sizeable epidemic, and 5) how quickly can we detect and characterise such epidemics, and how best to respond? Active virus surveillance in vectors and reservoirs will be combined with seroprevalence surveys in blood donors (to characterise features such as virus genomics, transmission, and immunity). Novel portable genome sequencing technologies and modern real-time epidemiological analyses will be applied to the most important arboviruses in Brazil. Using modern techniques that can unify the information from genomics and epidemiology, CADDE will strengthen the evidence base for public health actions, and strengthen the capacity of Brazilian health system to respond to emerging arboviral diseases. We will transform local capacity by training research scientists and public health personnel in field epidemiology, laboratory testing, the use of portable genomic technologies, and computational and statistical methods.