Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Health and Climate Change

From ancient bubonic plague to modern malaria, blood-feeding arthropods are responsible for some of the worst pandemics in human history. Climate change, biological invasion, and urban sprawl are predicted to increase the number and severity of tick-borne diseases across Canada and in temperate regions around the world. Lyme disease offers a cautionary tale for the next vector-borne disease in Canada: early cases went untreated by physicians unaware of its presence or unfamiliar with symptoms. Even today, uncertainty about test accuracy and availability, diagnostic symptoms, and sequelae lead to highly variable health outcomes. Learning from this history, we have developed a convergence research programme on tick-borne diseases (myLyme.ca). As part of this initiative, we here propose to develop and apply modern genomic tools for unbiased detection and surveillance of endemic and emerging tick-borne pathogens in ticks collected from across Canada. This includes development of laboratory protocols, bioinformatic standards, and data visualisations to improve surveillance and diagnosis. In contrast to current 'targeted' methods, the untargeted methods we propose can identify novel pathogens and variants of concern. Bioinformatics pipelines linked to a visualization tool for health care workers will map known variants and help identify emerging pathogens, while a new partnership south of the border will help to identify future ticks and pathogens likely to invade Canada over the next decade.