ACTIVITY 3: TROPICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES DETECTION AND PREVENTION

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Tropical infectious diseases are among the most important public health problems facing most countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and pose a major cause of morbidity and mortality, as well as crippling economic loss. The Tropical Infectious Diseases Detection and Prevention Core (TIDDPC) is an integral component of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases (APITMID), which provides a much-needed additional resource to help build a vigorous clinical and translational science program, focusing on developing improved diagnostic tests, rapid and accurate disease-detection systems, innovative treatments, vaccines and other prevention tools and strategies. The central hypothesis is that globalization and modern transportation, combined with demographic and societal changes in Asian countries, will result in more vector-borne infections, as well as zoonotic disease agents jumping species, causing increasingly frequent outbreaks of diseases having the potential of pandemic spread. Thus, the establishment of research pre-eminence in tropical infectious diseases at UHM would provide a valuable link in an early-warning sentinel network on new, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases for the continental United States. The specific aims of this RCMI-funded research core are to 1) develop a Pathogen Reference and Reagent Core Facility to support basic and applied research on new, emerging and re-emerging tropical infectious diseases; 2) develop a Molecular Pathology Core Facility to support research on new detection methods and pathogenesis of infectious diseases; and 3) develop a Microarray Core Facility to support pathogenesis-related research and assist in developing rapid pathogen-detection and pathogen-discovery technology.