ANIHWA call 3: ARBONET Epidemiological models for control of arboviral disease for Europe

Emerging and re-emerging infectious viral diseases continue to challenge both animal and human health around the world. For Europe, vector-borne infections, such as mosquito-borne West Nile fever (WNF), and Rift Valley fever (RVF) and tick-borne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), pose a continuous risk of incursions or northward expansion from endemic areas. The drivers of these infections are multifactorial and include increased mobility of human populations, increased global trade in live animals and foodstuffs, and climate change affecting the geographic distribution and competence of vectors. In addition, persistent arbovirus infections in wildlife pose unprecedented challenges to formulation of proper surveillance and control actions, due to the complexity of the interfaces between different host populations.The proposed initiative "ARBONET" will be focused on WNF, CCHF and RVF infections, specifically on development of epidemiological models that can inform risk-based surveillance and interventions that can control disease outbreaks in Europe. The major goal of this joint initiative is to create a multidisciplinary research network combining the expertise of veterinary and human epidemiologists, disease modellers, virologists and arthropod biologists to increase knowledge and understanding that will facilitate rapid control of disease outbreaks. The ARBONET proposal has the following specific objectives: 1) to develop epidemiological models of possible scenarios of CCHF, RVF and WNF spread in Europe, evaluating possible risk-based surveillance approaches and control strategies, 2) to promote epidemiological studies on distribution of viral genetic subpopulations, 3) to increase the knowledge of virus-vector and virus-vertebrate host interactions, and 4) to support dissemination of knowledge on the epidemiology, surveillance and control of these diseases.

In Europe, the vector-borne viruses West Nile virus (WNV), Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) pose a continuous risk of incursions or northward expansion from endemic areas. ARBONET will focus on development of epidemiological models to inform risk-based surveillance and interventions to control WNV, CCHFV and RVFV disease outbreaks in Europe. ARBONET's specific objectives are: 1) to develop epidemiological models of possible scenarios of CCHFV, RVFV and WNV spread in Europe, evaluating possible risk-based surveillance approaches and control strategies, 2) to promote epidemiological studies on distribution of viral genetic subpopulations, 3) to increase the knowledge of virus-vector and virus-vertebrate host interactions, and 4) to support dissemination of knowledge on the epidemiology, surveillance and control of these diseases.

Workpackage 5, led by The Pirbright Institute, will carry out appraisal of the main drivers of CCHFV, RVFV and WNV infections in arthropods, using published and new research on novel aspects of arthropod infections with these viruses to:
- Establish general platforms (data, protocols, methods and work streams) for in vitro studies on the up- and down-regulation of arthropod host cell genes in response to virus infection in tick and mosquito cell lines (small scale and high-throughput)
- Establish general platforms as above for in vivo studies on the up- and down-regulation of arthropod host cell genes in response to virus infection in ticks and mosquitoes
- Use the established platforms to generate transcriptomic, proteomic and interactomic datasets from uninfected and virus-infected tick and mosquito cell lines and whole arthropods to characterise the vector and non-vector cell response to arbovirus infection and thereby better understand the biology of the infection.
- Investigate the mutations in the WNV genome induced by single host (mosquito or vertebrate) adaptation.

In addition to the academic beneficiaries listed in the previous section, the following groups should benefit from this research:

- Key policy makers dealing with European preparedness against incursion by vector-borne diseases who will have access to improved risk modelling and prediction tools based on a better understanding of the epidemiology of WNV, RVFV and CCHFV infections and the relationship between the viruses and their mosquito and tick vectors

- The general public, including UK and European clinicians, farmers and slaughterhouse workers, who will have access to improved, more accurate non-technical information on vector-borne diseases in general, and WNV, RVFV and CCHFV in a European context in particular, via the consortium website and press releases

Release of research results will be managed according to the general rules on dissemination of intellectual property in the consortium agreement. 'Foreground' is the results, information, materials and knowledge generated in the project, whether protectable or not. This includes intellectual property rights (IPR) and unprotected know-how (e.g. confidential material). The consortium is obliged to protect, use and disseminate foreground. Important components of IPR (e.g. confidentiality, joint ownership, transfer of foreground) and access rights will be specified in the Consortium Agreement. Participants planning dissemination must obtain approval from the consortium and deal with objections from participants who consider that some data need to be protected before dissemination. Foreground and competencies within the consortium will be disseminated by regular meetings of the consortium and participants of each workpackage whenever needed. Moreover, student and post-doc participants in the consortium will circulate between laboratories to improve the effectiveness of research. The capacity-building training course on epidemiology and surveillance, and the e-learning training course will also improve the effectiveness of dissemination. New knowledge generated by the project will be made available to the public according to the general rules on dissemination in the consortium agreement.