Abstract
Together, malaria and the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) kill more than 800,000 people annually, while creating long-term disability in millions more. International support for mass drug administration, bed nets, and other preventive measures has resulted in huge public health gains, while support for translational research is leading to the development of some new neglected disease drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines. However, funding for basic science research has not kept up, such that we are missing opportunities to create a more innovative pipeline of control tools for parasitic and related diseases. There is an urgent need to expand basic science approaches for neglected diseases, especially in the areas of systems biology and immunology; ecology, evolution, and mathematical biology; functional and comparative OMICs; gene editing; expanded use of model organisms; and a new single-cell combinatorial indexing RNA sequencing approach. The world’s poor deserve access to innovation for neglected diseases. It should be considered a fundamental human right.
Highlights
The genomics group at the University of Washington published a single-cell combinatorial indexing RNA sequencing approach to allow for a molecular cell-by-cell profile of C. elegans [14]
A central repository of genes from C. elegans and other free-living and parasitic nematodes has been curated into a WormBase for comparative genomics [15, 16], while new functional tools such as RNAi, transgenesis, and CRISPR/Cas genome disruption and editing are revealing new information about human parasites, including new targets for intervention [17, 18]
Systems biology has provided a new framework for understanding complicated host–parasite interactions for malaria and other systems [22,23,24], while the relatively new field of systems vaccinology could transform how we select vaccine candidates and advance them through clinical development in an accelerated sequence [25]
Summary
Citation: Hotez PJ (2017) The poverty-related neglected diseases: Why basic research matters. PLoS Biol 15(11): e2004186. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pbio.2004186 Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: I have read the journal’s policy and I have the following conflicts of interest: I am patentholder and lead investigator on several vaccines in development and in clinical trials which will provide protection against neglected tropical diseases. Abbreviations: DALYs, disability-adjusted life years; NIAID, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; NIH, National Institutes of Health; NTDs, neglected tropical diseases; PDPs, product development partnerships; R&D, research & development; sci-RNA-seq, single-cell combinatorial indexing RNA sequencing.
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