NEW YORK – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday that it has awarded a cumulative $2.4 million in 10 grants for new diagnostic devices and approaches to detect syphilis infection. The projects aim to simplify the testing process in order to accelerate public health responses to congenital and adult syphilis.
A sexually transmitted infection caused by Treponema pallidum, adult syphilis cases increased by 80 percent between 2018 and 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while cases of syphilis acquired by newborns of infected moms jumped 183 percent over that time. In response, the US Department of Health and Human Services established a national task force in January.
The current syphilis testing algorithm requires at least two antibody-based tests, the NIH noted in a statement, adding that these tests can't distinguish an active infection from one that has resolved, nor can they confirm if antibiotics have cleared an infection.
"Antiquated testing makes it very difficult to ensure that people are appropriately diagnosed and fully treated," Jeanne Marrazzo, director of NIAID, said in the statement. "Advanced diagnostics could streamline syphilis care and also enhance our ability to measure the efficacy of candidate syphilis vaccines and other prevention modalities."
The NIAID grants include basic research on infant immune responses to syphilis, tests to identify different parts of T. pallidum genomic material in infants and adults, measures of antibiotic resistance in T. pallidum strains, and point-of-care testing platforms.
The molecular diagnostic awards include $163,698 to Magic Lifescience for a point-of-care multiplexed molecular diagnostic assay using giant magnetoresistive biosensors; $233,250 to researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, for aptamer-based detection technologies; and $233,250 to another UW research team for point-of-care detection of macrolide and tetracycline resistance using loop-mediated isothermal amplification. A third UW team, meanwhile, was awarded $264,750 for T. pallidum genome recovery through tiling amplicon sequencing.
Meanwhile, a team at the University of Texas at Austin was awarded $212,357 for a point-of-care nucleic acid test called microfluidic rapid and autonomous analytical device (microRAAD) with colorimetric readout.
Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center will examine pre-analytic factors affecting molecular tests for congenital syphilis, and a team at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, was awarded $260,760 to develop a direct diagnostic test for infectious and congenital syphilis.
Other awards aim to interrogate the infant immune response for diagnosis of congenital syphilis infection, to identify novel biomarkers for the diagnosis of syphilis in pregnancy and assessment of treatment response, and to evaluate released peptidoglycan fragments as a biomarker for early stages of syphilis.