EAPSI:Investigating the Presence of Bat Borne Viruses in Southeast Asia

Bats have been implicated as the natural hosts of several lethal viruses including the ebolaviruses, marburgviruses, and henipaviruses. The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa has demonstrated that the distribution of ebolaviruses extends beyond historical geographies in Central Africa. The circulation of an ebolavirus in humans, domestic pigs, and monkeys in the Philippines and evidence of ebolavirus infection in bats from Bangladesh and China illustrates that ebolaviruses are present within the Asian continent. It is now thought that the geographic distribution of these viruses follows the geographic range of the natural host, bats. This award supports research to initiate biosurveillance to examine the footprint of ebolaviruses and marburgviruses in Southeast Asia with the long-term goal of providing needed information to support the generation of predictive virus outbreak models. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Gavin J.D. Smith, an expert in infectious disease surveillance, at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore. As part of ongoing biosurveillance projects, the laboratory of Dr. Gavin J.D. Smith has catalogued a collection of blood sera from bats native to Singapore and Southeast Asia. This collaboration with Dr. Gavin J.D. Smith offers an opportunity to screen bat sera with a Luminex test in development that is capable of simultaneous detection of antibodies specific to Ebolavirus, Marburgvirus, and Henipavirus envelope glycoproteins. The presence of antibodies in bat blood sera specific to ebolaviruses and marburgviruses indicates previous infection and potential circulation of these viruses in Southeast Asia. The use of a single multipart method to screen sera collected from bats requires less sample volume and fewer tests than traditional methods. Using virus envelope glycoprotein coated beads; sera from bats, other wildlife hosts, and livestock can be screened in a cost-effective and high throughput fashion that will be useful for future biosurveillance projects. The award is funded in collaboration with the National Research Foundation of Singapore.