Helena Hildenwall

The project will identify and characterise future pandemic threats using a state-of-the-art viral metagenomics portfolio to screen wastewater and patient samples for endemic and emerging pathogens. This will be followed by rapid implementation of massively multiplexed targeted methods for high-frequency monitoring of several key pathogens of interest. Pandemics can be devastating, and early detection is a first crucial step to establish correct treatment and target surveillance systems. Wastewater-based epidemiology has during the COVID-19 pandemic shown its potential as a cost-effective and powerful surveillance methodology. Using novel massive multiplexing assays combined with wastewater samples takes this one step further and is likely to be a major improvement for routine public health monitoring and for future pandemic preparedness. The project is based on the hypothesis that there are still many pathogens, in particular viruses, that can infect and cause disease in humans that have not been described. There are several ways to find these pathogens, but we believe the most adequate and efficient is to investigate patients presenting with febrile illness of unknown aetiology and to monitor wastewater for signals of novel viruses, something that would likely indicate spread in human population. Herein we combine these two approaches to equip public health with improved tools for surveillance of zoonotic viruses.