LEAPS-MPS: Development of Novel Multistage Models for Wolbachia-Based Strategies to Control Mosquito-Borne diseases

LEAPS-MPS：开发基于沃尔巴克氏体的新型多阶段模型来控制蚊媒疾病

• 批准号: 2316242
• 负责人: Zhuolin Qu
• 金额: $ 24.66万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at San Antonio
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2316242&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: LEAPS; MPS; Development; Novel; Multistage

Mosquitoes are one of the deadliest creatures in the world because of the mosquito-borne diseases they can transmit, such as dengue fever, malaria, chikungunya, and Zika. Wolbachia-based intervention is a novel alternative mitigation strategy to control the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, as some Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes are less capable of transmitting diseases. This project proposes new and innovative mathematical models for the spread of Wolbachia infection in mosquitoes as a disease control which helps public health workers better understand the disease dynamics and optimize mitigation efforts. Besides the complex transmission dynamics, the models will also account for spatial and temporal heterogeneity that affects the transmission process. With these practical considerations, the proposed models can provide a comprehensive and solid understanding of Wolbachia-based interventions, and the results can better support public health workers to identify effective and sustainable approaches for reducing mosquito-borne diseases. The project will be based at a Hispanic-/minority-serving institution, where 67% of the students are minorities. The research efforts will be fully integrated with engaging students from various academic backgrounds in modeling infectious diseases and encouraging the participation of students from underrepresented groups. Leveraging the diverse student populations and their close connections to minority organizations, the research results will be disseminated through campus, professional, and media venues to achieve further impact on these groups and the general public audience.The proposed models will be built on solid epidemiological and mathematical foundations and will account for both the Wolbachia-induced biological effects and the heterogeneity from seasonality and mosquitoes’ spatial dispersions. The project will derive models with different levels of biological resolutions to balance the model’s predictability and analytical challenge, and it includes three specific aims: (1) analysis of small-scale models to gain a basic qualitative understanding of the Wolbachia establishment, in particular, the characterization of critical threshold condition for Wolbachia spreading and spatial infection wave propagation; this provides important insights into (2) the design of full-scale models that capture details of the biological effects. The numerical study of the full-scale models will inform practical scenarios that concern the field releases and identify efficient practices for establishing Wolbachia in the field. (3) The PI will also conduct detailed model parametrizations and quantify model uncertainty at different stages of the project. The local and global sensitivity analysis approaches will be employed to quantify the uncertainty in the models and determine their relative importance to the model predictions so that they can be more useful and interpretable by the public health community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

蚊子是世界上最致命的作品之一，因为它们可以传播的蚊子传播疾病，例如粉丝，疟疾，奇科肯尼亚和Zika。基于沃尔巴氏菌的干预是控制蚊子传播疾病传播的一种新型替代缓解策略，因为一些沃尔巴契亚感染的蚊子的能力较低，无法传播疾病。该项目提出了新的和创新的数学模型，以将沃尔巴奇感染传播为蚊子作为一种疾病控制，以帮助公共卫生工作者更好地了解疾病动态并优化缓解措施。除了复杂的传输动力学外，模型还将考虑影响传输过程的空间和临时异质性。通过这些实际的考虑，提出的模型可以对基于沃尔巴契亚的干预措施提供全面，扎实的了解，并且结果可以更好地支持公共卫生工作者，以确定减少蚊子传播疾病的有效和可持续方法。该项目将设在西班牙裔/少数派服务机构，那里有67％的学生是少数群体。研究工作将与来自各种学术背景的学生完全融合，以模拟传染病，并鼓励来自代表性不足的群体的学生参与。利用潜水员的学生群体及其与少数群体组织的密切联系，该研究结果将建立在固体流行病学和数学基础上，并将解释Wolbachia诱导的生物学效应以及季节性和蚊子的空间分散季节的异质性。该项目将得出具有不同级别的生物学分辨率的模型，以平衡模型的可预测性和分析挑战，并且包括三个具体目的：（1）分析小规模模型，以获得对Wolbachia机构的基本定性理解，尤其是Wolbachia散布和空间感染波浪传播的关键阈值的特征；这为（2）设计了捕获生物学效果细节的全尺度模型的设计提供了重要的见解。对全面模型的数值研究将为您的现场发布并确定在该领域建立沃尔巴基亚的有效实践的实用场景。 （3）PI还将在项目的不同阶段进行详细的模型参数，并量化模型不确定性。将聘请本地和全球敏感性分析方法来量化模型中的不确定性，并确定其对模型预测的相对重要性，以便公共卫生社区可以更有用和解释。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识和更广泛影响的评估来审查Criteria，通过评估来通过评估来获得支持。