By Chioma Umeha
Against the backdrop of the raging Lassa fever
virus, the Redeemer’s University, (RUN), Ede, Osun State, has developed a test
kit known as Pan-Lassa Rapid Diagnostics Test (PL RDT), that enables the
testing of urine, faeces and blood samples of humans or multilamellar rats for
Lassa fever in 10 minutes.
The discovery which also contains molecules that
inhibit Lassa fever and a potential vaccine against Lassa fever, is one of the
discoveries of the institution’s World-Bank funded African Centre of Excellence
for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID).
The Vice Chancellor of RUN, Professor Debo
Adeyewa, who spoke Weekend, at the unveiling of the new research breakthrough
on Lassa Fever, at the university’s Senate Chambers, however, blamed
authorities of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), over its policy
that denies private universities access to its funds, noting that this hurts
Nigeria, particularly in the areas of research and development.
Professor Adeyewa, who raised this concern, said
the university has been at the fore-front of researches and discoveries, but
decried that the paucity of funds and the inability of the university to access
funds from TETFund, stalls the commercialization of its research breakthroughs
on Ebola and Lassa Fever virus.
Decrying the policy Adeyewa said: “TETFund pumps a
lot of money into public universities for physical structures. But the fact
remains that once researches and development are not prioritised, nothing will
come out of it.
“Without funds from TETFund, the Redeemer’s
University is doing exploit in the area of researches and development. This
means we can do greater exploits if the federal government allows TETFund to
make its intervention funds available to private universities. Our university
made new discoveries when Ebola was raging and now we have also made new
discovery on Lassa fever virus.”
Explaining the research breakthrough, the Director
of ACEGID, RUN, Prof. Christian Happi, who was a member of a team that
performed the first Lassa fever Positive Reverse Transcription (PCR) diagnosis
in Nigeria in 2008, 39 years after it was discovered in the city of Lassa in
1969, said: “In 2014, we developed and tested the first generation of Lassa
fever rapid diagnostics test (RDT). Although, the test showed great potential
in the field, its sensitivity was low compared to the gold standard, Positive
Reverse Transcription (PCR), because the test could not pick up all the three
lineages of the Lassa virus circulating in Nigeria. We went back to work to
improve on the RDTs, and in January 2016, we successfully developed a Pan-Lassa
fever test that is highly sensitive and specific.”
He noted that it is well established that
Ribavirin currently being used to treat Lassa fever was not designed for the
disease and as such, it’s only effective when given in the early phase of the
infection.
He said: “This prompted us to take advantage of
our current knowledge of genomics technology to have better insight into the
virus genome and eventually identify potential drug targets. Using the next
generation sequencing, we successfully sequenced hundreds of Lassa fever
viruses, thereby generating the largest catalogue of Lassa fever virus
sequenced in the world.
“This in turn resulted to the identification of
new epitopes in the virus. In addition, we were able to determine the ancient
origins, evolution and transmission of the Lassa virus.”
According to the don, the Lassa fever virus
originated from present day Nigeria, 1, 060 years ago and spread out of Nigeria
400 years ago to other West African countries.
“A comparison between the Lassa fever and Ebola
viruses showed that Lassa fever is less adapted and efficient for
human-to-human transmission unlike the Ebola virus, pointing out the fact why
Lassa fever outbreaks are less disastrous than Ebola,” he added.
