Colombia

New inroads against dengue

With 50 to100 million new cases annually, and 2.5 billion people at risk of infection, dengue is the most important viral disease spread by insects in the world. The lethal forms of dengue hemorrhagic fever occur when people are infected with more than one of the four serotypes, which is increasingly more common with travel between continents. Currently in Cali, Colombia, all four serotypes are circulating in the population, yet there are some mosquitoes that do not carry the dengue virus at all.

In a major step towards preventing dengue transmission, researchers identified potential molecules and mechanisms that help determine what factors limit the development of this virus. With funding from the Colombian government, a postdoctoral fellow from Simon Fraser University spent six months in Cali to build on the project’s initial promising results – a concrete example of strengthened linkages among institutions.

LACREG support has increased the capacity of Colombian researchers, who can now draw on techniques learned at Carl Lowenberger’s lab. As a result of access to SFU’s Faculty of Health Science, two former SFU students began working at CIDEIM. Moreover, Clara Ocampo has generated new funding, partly on the strength of the two-way exchange.