An international team launched the DeZi network to understand how the viruses spread, interact, and cause disease across Africa and Asia.
The Dengue and Zika Immunology and Genomics Multi-Country Network (DeZi) is led by Imperial and received £5.65 million core funding from a Wellcome Trust Infectious Disease Award. This was supplemented by £600 thousand funding from Temasek and £600 thousand contribution from Singapore National Environment Agency's Environmental Health Institute through UNITEDengue.
The DeZi programme brings together leading research institutes and public health agencies in more than fifteen countries, with coordination through Imperial's School of Public Health and the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. DeZi integrates genomics, serology, and modelling to reveal the burden, transmission, and evolution of dengue and Zika viruses and to translate findings into global and national policy.
"Our vision is to spearhead an international collaborative programme that links state-of-the-art research into effective policymaking" Professor Nuno Faria Imperial College London
By combining innovation with equitable partnerships, DeZi aims to accelerate the adoption of improved diagnostics, strengthen regional laboratory capacity and South-South collaborations, and enhance preparedness for future arboviral epidemics under a changing climate. The network's open-access resources and policy engagement activities will support countries to integrate the surveillance of dengue, Zika, and other priority mosquito-borne viruses into routine national health systems.
Filling critical data gaps
Although dengue causes more than 100 million infections each year, and Zika's explosive 2015-16 pandemic highlighted its devastating congenital effects, scientists still know little about how both viruses co-circulate in many tropical regions.
"The tools and training developed through DeZi will strengthen outbreak preparedness far beyond dengue and Zika" Professor Ng Lee Ching National Environment Agency
DeZi will deploy state-of-the-art serological assays, genomic sequencing, and antigenic mapping to reconstruct infection histories and track the evolution and transmission of viral lineages as close as possible to real time. Using harmonised datasets, DeZi researchers will model how immunity and viral evolution interact to shape future epidemic risk. The results will inform national and international stakeholders, including improved risk-assessment frameworks for dengue and Zika outbreaks and recommendations for Zika screening in pregnancy.
The network builds on long-standing collaborations in the Americas and expands them into Africa and Asia. Regional hubs in Kinshasa, Luanda, and Singapore will host in-country training, standardise laboratory protocols, and strengthen national surveillance systems. DeZi will also promote South-South collaborations between and within Africa, Asia, and the Americas, ensuring equitable sharing of data and resources and sustaining research capacity beyond the lifetime of the project.
"This network empowers laboratories and researchers in Africa to take a leading role in arbovirus genomics" Professor Placide Mbala-Kingebeni Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale
About DeZi
The DeZi project will run for five years. Partners include research institutions and public-health laboratories across Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, the Democratic Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, Kenya, Singapore, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, French Polynesia, India, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Brazil, working closely with UKHSA, Ministry of Health in Portugal, Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Yale University, WHO and networks such as Machine Learning & Global Health Network, UNITEDengue, CREID, and ARTIC2.0.
DeZi is led by Prof. Nuno Faria (Co-Lead of Pathogen Genomic Epidemiology Unit, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Imperial College London), alongside Prof. Ng Lee Ching (Group Director of Environmental Health Institute at the National Environment Agency, Singapore), Prof. Eva Harris (Professor and Chair, Division of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, School of Public Health; Director of the Center for Global Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, USA), Prof. Placide Mbala (Head of Epidemiology and Global Health at Institut National de Reserche Biomédicale, Democratic Republic of Congo), Jocelyne Vasconcelos (Head of the Health Research Centre of Angola), Dr. Bireshwar Sinha (Scientist and Deputy Director at Centre for Health Research and Development, Society for Applied Studies, India), and Dr. Eve Lackritz (Deputy Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy [CIDRAP], University of Minnesota, USA).
Professor Nuno Faria of Imperial College London (UK) said: "Our vision is to spearhead an international collaborative programme that links state-of-the-art research into effective policymaking, empowering local leadership and bringing together researchers, stakeholders and communities to address the growing challenge of arboviral threats".
Professor Placide Mbala-Kingebeni of the Pathogen Genomic Laboratory at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (DRC), and DeZi's Regional Director for Africa, said: "This network empowers laboratories and researchers in Africa to take a leading role in arbovirus genomics".
Professor Ng Lee Ching, Director of the Environmental Health Institute at the National Environment Agency (Singapore), lead of the UNITEDengue initiative, and DeZi's Regional Director for Asia, said: "The tools and training developed through DeZi will strengthen outbreak preparedness far beyond dengue and Zika".
Professor Eva Harris of the University of California (USA) said: "By benchmarking the assays and models we develop through DeZi using our longstanding cohort studies in Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Brazil that experienced the Zika pandemic in the context of endemic dengue, we can validate assays that distinguish dengue and Zika infections and model scenarios of emergence in our partner countries in Africa and Asia. Further, by uniting datasets and expertise across continents, we can quantify how immunity and viral evolution interact over time and space".
Dr. Eve Lackritz, of the University of Minnesota (USA): "The DeZi network brings together the world's leading arbovirus researchers working in partnership with local and national public health leaders to build effective systems to detect and respond to new and emerging threats of Zika and dengue outbreaks, based on the best available science".
Dr Diana Rojas, a member of the DeZi steering committee and the co-lead of the WHO Arbovirus initiative: "The DeZi multi-country network is fully aligned with the strategic priorities of the WHO Global Arbovirus Initiative".
Main picture credit: Lim et al., Nature Communications 2024.
