MWC lab part of large international effort targeting Acute Rheumatic Fever
Researchers from the University of Auckland (led by Maurice Wilkins Centre Principal Investigator Associate Professor Nikki Moreland and Affiliate Investigator Dr Reuben McGregor) are joining forces with other international experts as part of a global Acute Rheumatic Fever Diagnosis Collaborative (ARC) network to transform the diagnosis of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.
Over 55 million people live with rheumatic heart disease that can lead to heart failure and premature death. Rheumatic fever, which can develop after a Strep A skin or throat infection, is far more common in New Zealand than in most high-income countries and reducing disease rates has proved extremely challenging.
Multiple strategies, including improving early diagnosis and ultimately developing vaccines to prevent Strep A infection are needed to improve rheumatic heart disease outcomes globally.
The ARC Network, funded by the Leducq Foundation, brings together a team of global experts to identify biomarkers that could serve as the foundation for a new Acute Rheumatic Fever diagnostic test. Led by Professor Andrea Beaton from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the network will look to identify and validate biomarkers for rheumatic fever, which will then play a critical role in the development of a highly sensitive diagnostic test, providing fast-tracked results. (https://arcdiagnosticnetwork.squarespace.com).
During the next five years, the network will recruit rheumatic fever patients in low- and middle-income countries across four continents. They will then employ cutting-edge science to identify and validate biomarkers that could serve as a basis for the world’s first sensitive and specific diagnostic test for the disease.
In New Zealand, contributions to the global effort will be led by Nikki and Reuben who will be working on samples collected from patients diagnosed with rheumatic fever around the world as part of the international network. This also includes Associate Professor Rachel Webb, a clinical infectious disease consultant (and Maurice Wilkins Centre Clinical Associate), who is a member of the ARC clinical team that review clinical data across the network.
Inclusion in the ARC Network as one of only four international laboratories currently contracted to work on the samples acknowledges the research expertise that has been built up over many years at the University of Auckland.
The early stages of Nikki and Reuben’s acute rheumatic fever work and development of some of the assays that will be used in the ARC network were funded as a flagship project in MWC3. Additionally, in late 2023, the MWC Infectious disease research theme funding contributed to further development of immunoassays to detect antibodies to multiple pathogens including Strep A.