New EU-funded project to advance rapid diagnosis of childhood infections in Africa

The €2.75 million European Union-funded project aims to accelerate the development of a point of care diagnostics test for children with fever in Africa.

The project, which is led by Imperial College London, will establish a rapid diagnostic platform to help clinicians distinguish between malaria, bacterial, viral, and tuberculosis infections. By enabling rapid and accurate diagnosis, the platform could help ensure that the children receive the most appropriate treatment as quickly as possible. The project is supported by Global Health EDCTP3 and its members.

Led by Professor Aubrey Cunnington, PATHFINDER brings together six partners from Europe and Africa to advance a novel diagnostic platform known as Lacewing. The platform is being developed by ProtonDx through a long-standing collaboration with Imperial researchers in the Department of Infectious Disease.

Fever is one of the most common reasons children are brought into healthcare settings across Africa, but distinguishing the different between infectious agents is a challenge Professor Aubrey Cunnington Department of Infectious Disease

The technology uses patterns in the patient’s gene-expression responses to identify the likely cause of the fever. Researchers will now take the platform beyond proof-of-concept studies to evaluate its performance in clinical settings, which involves using the platform to identify illness in 1,000 children with febrile illness in Burkina Faso and Ghana.

Professor Aubrey Cunnington, Principal Investigator said: “Fever is one of the most common reasons children are brought into healthcare settings across Africa, but distinguishing the different between infectious agents is a challenge. We hope that PATHFINDER will help us advance diagnostic technology that can support clinicians in making faster, more accurate treatment decisions to improve patient outcomes while reducing the unnecessary use of medicines like antibiotics.”

Strengthening research and innovation across Africa

Alongside Imperial, scientific leadership of this project is being provided by Dr François Kiemde at the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro (CRUN), Burkina Faso.

In addition to evaluating the diagnostic platform, a consortium of researchers will explore how the technology could be implemented within health systems. This includes assessing usability, regulatory approval pathways, local manufacturing opportunities, sustainable funding models, and the potential impact on patient care and public health. The researchers also hope to support diagnostics research and innovation in Africa while helping to train the next generation of researchers in the field.

PATHFINDER builds on the foundation established through the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Digital Diagnostics for African Health Systems, led by Professor Aubrey Cunnington and Professor Halidou Tinto, Director of the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro. The NIHR- funded programme has already supported 10 African PhD fellows in developing and evaluating new diagnostic platforms, which are now being developed by ProtonDx, alongside extensive clinical, health-systems, and community and stakeholder engagement research across Africa.

The PATHFINDER consortium brings together partners across Europe and Africa, and the wider investigator team includes Professor Jethro Herberg, Dr Myrsini Kaforou and Francesca Piffer at Imperial; Dr Nick Moser, Dr Jesús Rodríguez-Manzano, Professor Pantelis Georgiou, and Dr Kasia Szostak at ProtonDx; Professor Linda Amoah and Professor Samuel Duodu at the University of Ghana; Professor Henk Schallig and Dr Petra Mens at Amsterdam UMC; and Dr Effua Usuf at the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM.

Funded by the European Union under Global Health EDCTP3. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of Global Health EDCTP3 nor its members. Neither of the parties can be held responsible for them.