Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

Chagas disease (CD), caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, is transmitted by triatomine bugs. This organism is endemic from the southern USA to the temperate regions of South America and more than 10 million people are currently infected. CD can enter or be maintained in populations through migration, mother to baby transmission, organ transplantation and blood transfusion. Some experts estimate that there may be as many as 100,000 legal immigrants in the US and Canada who are unknowingly infected with T. cruzi. A commercial assay for blood screening has just been licensed in the USA (pending in Canada), this test is almost certain to suffer the same limitations as all other EIA-type assays introduced to date (continued transmission due to imperfect sensitivity and blood wastage due to imperfect specificity). We began a program to develop novel assays for infectious disease using mass spectrometric data directly as well as 'next generation' assays that exploit the richness of the MS data converted to standard platforms (eg: ELISA). Given our responsibilities as directors of the National Reference Center for Parasitology and the lack of screening tests to protect the Canadian blood supply from the transfusion-transmissible protozoa, our initial targets included babesiosis, malaria and CD. We have identified specific biomarkers to: i) diagnose CD; ii) give prognostic information (ie: risk of cardiac complications); iii) and can predict cure following treatment (neither of which is possible with current antibody-based tests). We have generated polyclonal antibody against these biomarkers but these reagents are not very specific in Western blot. We propose to use the CIHR-POP funds to generate specific monoclonal antibody and bring this invention to a point where it will be interesting for a diagnostic company and further increases chances to license it to a commercial partner.