The MoU will build a partnership both in and beyond data and skill-sharing and support capacity development with India’s scientific research community. It will ensure that data collection is compliant with international standards and regulatory requirements. Both ICMR and IDDO will exchange and share ideas on emerging infections and three vector-borne diseases in the elimination phase: malaria, visceral leishmaniasis, and filariasis.

Working together, both parties will support and develop best practices for data management, data documentation, data sharing and the development of equitable governance frameworks. The partnership will also explore opportunities for collaboration on research programmes and develop a three-year work plan on capacity strengthening, an exchange of research fellows, training on data management and statistical analysis.

Professor Philippe Guérin, Director of IDDO, said: “We are delighted to partner with the Indian Council of Medical Research and look forward to sharing expertise and strengthening our collaboration. Recent major public health events have shown just how effective shared knowledge and skills can be, and how crucial it is for the international scientific research community to continue to work together ever more closely. This partnership provides early career researchers with a fantastic opportunity to enhance their skills and improve treatment outcomes for affected communities.”

Find out more about the MoU here.

These are:

• Malaria with the ICMR-NIMR in New Delhi

• Visceral leishmaniasis with the ICMR and the Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (ICMR-RMRIMS) in Patna

• Lymphatic filariasis with the ICMR and the Vector Control Research Centre (ICMR-VCRC) in Puducherry

Researchers have been developing their skills in key areas like data collection, storage and management; modelling; clinical trials and public health. Below several of the researchers discuss their experience taking part in the ICMR-NIMR and IDDO collaboration and the new skills they have acquired during the training.

I joined the ICMR-NIMR-IDDO project to utilize my skills and expertise of clinical trials in exploring various infectious disease. The training activities in all the modules were conducted in depth. All the resources like databases, materials, documents were provided effectively and in a timely manner. These training schedules have widened my capabilities some of them being preparation of protocol, designing of case report forms for a clinical trial, scoping and searching various databases, creating appropriate search strategies that can help in future trial designing and planning.

 – Dr Beauty Behera, Clinical Research Manager, ICMR-NIMR-IDDO

 

My motivation behind joining this project was to get trained in applying the huge amount of available data to identify knowledge gaps that will inform future research priorities in malaria. This training is a great learning experience, and it introduced me to different skills related to data in malaria research, clinical trials, and public health.

– Dr Reena Verma, Consultant, ICMR-NIMR-IDDO

 

Research is a vast field, and it is ever-growing. Joining the ICMR-NIMR-IDDO training suited my need to grow my skills and also provided an opportunity to work with the leading international researchers in the field of Malaria. It has been an amazing experience and the skills that I have acquired during this training will go a long way to help me grow professionally even more, and expand my knowledge horizon.

– Dr Sundus Ahmad, Consultant, ICMR-NIMR-IDDO

 

Being from the molecular biology background, joining the ICMR-NIMR-IDDO joint project seemed to me as a wonderful opportunity to widen my horizon and explore new avenues. The training was quite thorough and detailed, and I learned the basics of data collection, storage and management which are the pillars for every field of research and will help me to systematically design and execute my research plans.

 – Dr Minu Nain, Consultant, ICMR-NIMR-IDDO

 

My main motivation to join the IDDO-NIMR-ICMR training was to enhance the knowledge and open a new door of research on Infectious diseases like Malaria, visceral leishmaniasis, and lymphatic filariasis. The training modules were comprehensive and included detailed sessions on Systematic Review Meta-Analysis, REDCap and Covidence softwares which would be very useful for my future research plans.

– Dr Azhar Uddin, Consultant,  ICMR-VCRC-IDDO

 

I have recently joined the ICMR-NIMR-IDDO joint project with an aim to learn more about the emerging issues in malaria research, and the approaches that we could adopt to address these issues.

– Dr Pushpender Kumar, Consultant, ICMR-NIMR-IDDO

Being a PhD in Bioinformatics and with six months of working experience in construction, maintenance, analysis, etc. of celiac disease biorepository at AIIMS Delhi, I wanted to further explore new horizons in public and clinical health, and this was my motivation behind joining the ICMR-NIMR-IDDO joint project. During the training, I got an opportunity to learn from the pioneers of the respective fields. Currently, I am learning Geospatial modelling from the IDDO team and I am also engaged with the IDDO informatics team to learn about WWARN Data Manager and WWARN surveyors.

– Mr Apoorv Gupta, Biostatistician/ Data analyst, ICMR-NIMR-IDDO

The RSTMH Early Career Grants Programme – the new name for the former RSTMH Small Grants Programme – is now open for applications and the deadline to apply is April 29. The grants scheme funds projects across the research spectrum, including lab-based, clinical, implementation and policy-related research, by up to £5,000.

Applications are invited from early career researchers and global health professionals based anywhere in the world, who have not had research funding in their own name before.

Grant requests can be on any area of tropical medicine or global health. RSTMH’s thematic priorities in its current strategy, plus other areas of health that are less well known are encouraged.

These are:

• Neglected tropical diseases, with a particular focus on their overlap with non-communicable Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), with a particular focus on their overlap with Non-Communicable Diseases and the Sustainable Development Goals
• Malaria, with a particular focus on drug resistance
• One Health and wider planetary health. The consideration of human health alongside animal health and the environment, in the context of social, economic and political factors
• Topical issues including, but not limited to, emerging diseases 
• Drug resistant infections
• Snakebite
• Mycetoma and other skin NTDs 
• Co-morbidity and NCDs
• Coronavirus
• Climate change

The maximum RSTMH Early Career Grant award is £5,000 (including any taxes on relevant purchases) and for up to one year in duration.

RSTMH will be running a webinar for anyone who wants to find out more about the Early Career Grant application process on 24 February at 13:30 - 14:30 (GMT). Register your place here. 

View here for more information or to apply.

A living systematic review

IDDO has found that data exists on more than 35,000 patients enrolled in over 150 trials in the past 20 years. This is captured in the VL Surveyor, an interactive tool that maps VL clinical trials and provides a clear visualisation of the research landscape.

This scattered but rich resource informs knowledge gaps in treatment optimisation that could influence future research. However, usually only summary statistics are available from publications, with results often not reported in a standardised and statistically comparable manner across different trials. This makes comparative analysis of efficacy between drugs, regimens and regions almost impossible. 

A harmonised database of VL clinical trials

IDDO has assembled a harmonised database of VL clinical trials containing over 14,000 IPD, representing nearly one-third of the published sample size. Study groups investigating key research questions using the combined IPD have been launched in collaboration with data contributors and research experts.

Case report form for uncomplicated VL

In collaboration with the VL research community and partners including DNDi, IDDO has developed a freely-available case report form annotated to CDISC standards for uncomplicated VL. The case report form provides a flexible standard for use by VL researchers in clinical trial research.

Study groups

IDDO facilitates collaborative Study Groups to undertake individual patient data meta-analyses to answer specific research questions about visceral leishmaniasis (VL) treatments.  Working together, and combining data from different regions and populations, is improving our understanding of the disease, and will advance research and subsequent drug development.

Systematic reviews

Our global collaborations have produced systematic reviews investigating critical areas of concern surrounding VL treatment and clinical trial research.

One Group will explore Anaemia among patients with VL and haematological dynamics post treatment and aim to characterise the haematological parameters at baseline and during the initial treatment and in the ensuing follow-up period using individual participant data hosted at IDDO VL data platform.

The other will look at Host, parasite, and drug determinants of therapeutic responses. There is a marked regional heterogeneity in therapeutic response against antileishmanial therapies in VL. Single dose Liposomal Amphotericin B remains the current first line therapy in the Indian subcontinent due to the emergence and evolution of drug resistant parasites against pentavalent antinomy (PA). However, PA in combination with Paromomycin has demonstrated a high efficacy in Africa and continues to be used as a first line therapy. Such heterogeneity in therapeutic responses has been thought to arise due to regional differences in parasite sensitivity/susceptibility. The importance of host and drug parameters as a determinant of observed differences in clinical response demand further investigations.

Both Study Groups will be co-led by Dr Prabin Dahal and Dr Sauman Singh. Colleagues from the VL research community interested in joining the Study Groups should email vl@iddo.org for more information.

Prabin Dahal, one of the study co-leads remarked: “Individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis is increasingly recognised as a gold-standard method for evidence synthesis. It allows a more thorough and flexible analysis to be undertaken that would otherwise not be possible through published aggregate data. For example, the number of relapses in any single trials are few. Pooling IPD from several studies would allow us to explore the host, parasite and drug determinants of relapses which can be used to inform optimal case management. These study groups are therefore a unique opportunity for the global VL community to answer some of the long standing questions related to disease and the drugs.“

VL, also known as kala-azar, is transmitted to humans through the bites from infected female phlebotomine sand flies. If left untreated, it is fatal in 95% of cases. Globally, it is estimated there are up to 22,000 new cases of VL each year which occur in Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

IDDO is a scientifically independent, multi-disciplinary coalition of the global infectious disease community. It is unique among data-sharing initiatives in taking many different types of data and standardising these to create larger-scale datasets to enable global research collaborations to pose new scientific questions.