Research approach

Designing highly-specific arbovirus serological assays

Detecting and differentiating dengue and Zika in regions where both viruses co-circulate is hard — antibody cross-reactivity defeats most off-the-shelf serological assays. DeZi addresses this directly: developing and validating highly specific IgG and IgM assays for ZIKV that work alongside DENV in multiplex format, then deploying them at scale across Africa and Asia to reconstruct decades of past circulation that surveillance has missed.

We use those validated tools to run age-stratified serosurveys at 21 sites across 13 countries, generating accurate seroprevalence and force-of-infection estimates that anchor every other DeZi work package — informing where to sequence, where to invest in vector control, and where vaccine candidates would have the most impact.

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