WildHealth: from wildlife monitoring to preventing and mitigating the spread of zoonotic diseases and drug resistance

Dr Frédéric Touzalin    University College Dublin & University of Glasgow

WildHealth is a research and training project that will generate new insights into the understanding of the spread of zoonotic diseases and drug-resistance genes (DRGs) to aid in their prevention.

Zoonotic diseases have been a major threat to public health in recent decades, and COVID-19 is the latest example of their serious consequences. Strengthening the tracking of pathogens and developing therapies to combat emerging infections has long been, and still remains, the major policy response of global health organizations, which unfortunately is an after-care service. There is an urgent need to develop a holistic “One Health” concept that until now has remained under-exploited due to major limitations. Dr Frédéric Touzalin will implement an innovative, integrative “One Health” approach to monitoring bat health and their pathogen dynamics, to fill this gap by developing a new methodology to identify the complex set of conditions that support the maintenance and emergence of pathogens and DRGs in wild bats. Using the recently annotated genome of the Myotis myotis bat, and a long-term study population of wild bats, Dr Touzalin will explore the microbial, environmental, and anthropogenic factors that shape bats’ immune response. Understanding these factors is the key to preventing the (re-)emergence of zoonotic diseases and DRGs and better informing and protecting human populations, a pro-active rather than a re-active response.

The WildHealth project involves multidisciplinary approaches across fields of research that have traditionally been compartmentalised. Dr Touzalin has expertise in veterinary practice, demography, molecular biology and bat field ecology, but will benefit from training in Next Generation Sequencing for pathogens and DRGs identification, immunology, bioinformatics and machine learning based modelling to combine all these disciplines. A clear training programme that includes elements of data generation and analysis, public engagement, project management, student supervision, and grant writing will be established over the lifetime of the fellowship.

WildHealth is cross-sectoral and will produce results relevant to academics, the public, and environmental policy makers by working with two universities, local policy makers, and a conservation NGO. WildHealth is relevant to the “One Health” strategy in many ways. This project will be among the first attempts to explore the evolutionary and environmental drivers underlying host-pathogen interaction in the natural environment. It will provide new tools (biomarkers) for diagnosing the health of wild animals to improve conservation policies and wildlife management. By unravelling the mechanisms that shape the dynamics of pathogens and DRGs, this project will formulate essential guidelines to avoid and reduce the impact of future zoonotic disease emergence.

WildHealth will greatly expand our understanding of the drivers of pathogen diversity and dynamics in bats, considered as major viral reservoirs, to prevent future epidemics. Dr Touzalin will develop as a notable scientific leader in the field of One Health, identifying the evolutionary processes and environmental patterns that link host and pathogens in the wild. These results will be used to inform public health and environmental management policies, aimed at preventing and mitigating future major public health crises. Dr Touzalin will conduct his research under the mentorship of Professor Emma Teeling, University College Dublin and Professor Daniel Streicker, University of Glasgow.