Tochikunda - Disease Surveillance

We aim to enable the elimination of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV from the human population. To achieve this, we have learnt from the eradication of smallpox and developed a novel diagnostic solution.

One of the main reasons smallpox was eliminated is that it had little presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission owing to patients typically only being infectious after the onset of a characteristic rash. Effective quarantine as well as ring vaccination to contain the infections was thus possible, even in resource limited settings.

SARS-CoV-2 and HIV have significant presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission, presenting a major barrier to their elimination. We are developing a novel longitudinal continuous monitoring diagnostic for these infections. In this solution, safe passive allergic sensitisation to disease biomarkers in healthy people at risk of infection provides constant surveillance for disease and a benign early symptom in cases of infection.

Elimination of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV would improve health and wealth.

Detecting disease outbreaks early enough to be able to contain them is difficult for infections that can spread before people show symptoms. HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are examples. This is one of the factors that has contributed to these infections causing worldwide pandemics. 

There were 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS, 1.7 million new infections and 690 000 deaths globally in 2019 according to HIV.gov. There were 105 200 people living with HIV and 4 139 newly diagnosed people in the UK in 2019 according to the National AIDS Trust.

There have been reductions in new HIV infections in London in recent years. One of the main factors behind this reduction has been frequent testing as explained by Prof Mark Nelson, a London HIV doctor in this video clip. Frequent testing means infections are discovered earlier before they are spread to a lot of people. 

Our solution takes frequent testing to the next level and makes it continuous testing, amplifying the prevention benefits as well as early treatment benefits for patients.

Presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission are also major factors in the COVID-19 pandemic as explained by corona virologist Dr Matthew Frieman in this clip. 

Our solution is to safely and temporarily make healthy individuals allergic to HIV or SARS-CoV-2. We achieve this by employing a well known process called passive allergic sensitisation in a novel way.

Passive allergic sensitisation has about a 50 year history of safe human clinical practice in the form of the P-K test. In the P-K test, an allergist would take a patient's blood serum, which contains allergy mediating IgE antibodies, and transfer it to a non-allergic volunteer's skin. The allergist would then test various suspected allergens on the skin of the volunteer. If the patient is allergic, the transferred IgE antibodies would respond, resulting in a localized allergic reaction. Importantly, the P-K test was safe and demonstrated that the transfer of IgE was temporary and remained local, meaning there was no risk of developing an active allergy or a systemic reaction in the healthy volunteer.

In our solution, we will manufacture IgE antibodies that recognise HIV or SARS-CoV-2, which can be applied to a small part of a healthy individual's body for example on skin or gums by applying a cream for example. If the individual should get infected they will be quickly alerted by local allergic symptoms. 

For HIV, our target populations are initially the UNAIDS key populations of gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people, people who inject drugs and prisoners and other incarcerated people. According to UNAIDS, in 2016, outside of sub-Saharan Africa, key populations and their sexual partners accounted for 80% of new HIV infections.

Late diagnosis is an issue for these populations, meaning that chances are missed to stop transmission chains of the virus. Late diagnosed individuals' health also suffers as a result of delay in treatment initiation.

Our solution will enable individuals in our target populations to know their status in a timely way so they can modify their behaviour to stop onward transmission of the virus and/ or take medication both for the sake of their own health and for prevention of onward transmission.

For SARS-CoV-2, as the pandemic is very generalised in the population, we are not targeting particular groups but being broad, just like vaccines are broadly targeted. Our solution is aimed at alerting individuals to their infections early and potentially before symptoms. They can then take steps to prevent onward transmission and/ or seek treatment.

We are engaging our target populations by reaching out to these groups and asking about the acceptability of our solution using surveys and interviews. We know that our solution will only make an impact if it is accepted and used by the target groups therefore our outreach to and incorporation of feedback from these groups is a priority for us.

Our solution is a disease surveillance platform technology that will enable individuals to be quickly alerted to infection. Individuals will then alert their healthcare system so it can deploy prevention tools where they will make the most impact on slowing and containing the outbreak.  

Our solution can be deployed for existing viruses like HIV and SARS-CoV-2 or for emerging viruses of the future. All that needs to be changed is the specificity of the IgE antibodies used. There is even scope for the use of multiple specificities of IgE antibodies in order to provide surveillance for multiple viruses simultaneously. 

We are currently at the stage of prototyping our solution. Our prototype will use IgE antibodies specific for the ovalbumin protein to detect an infection of mice by an influenza virus that has been engineered to produce ovalbumin.

If we are successful with this prototype, we will carry on to produce the HIV and SARS-CoV-2 versions of our solution.

Our solution is innovative because it addresses asymptomatic and presymptomatic HIV and SARS-CoV-2 in a new way using continuous longitudinal monitoring. Frequent testing is currently advocated and practiced for HIV and SARS-CoV-2, reaping a lot of prevention and patient health benefits. We take testing to the next level, from frequent to continuous, which we believe will bring even more prevention benefits to the community and improve health outcomes for individuals.

We believe our approach could be catalytic and help push healthcare in general towards continuous monitoring. This approach could be developed for other conditions, for example presymptomatic cancer, improving health outcomes for more patients. 

Number currently served: 0 as we are preclinical

Number served in 1 year: 0 as we we will still be in preclinical phase

Number served in 5 years: a few thousand in clinical trials

As we are currently at the prototype stage, we are measuring our progress based on:

• amount of funding raised
• number of personnel working on the solution
• number and success status of independent prototypes and experiments carried out
• number of scientific papers published

Full time - 1

Part time advisors - 4

Part time volunteers - 2

Tinashe Muchada, MSci, the Director of Tochikunda, has a master’s degree in Theoretical Physics from Imperial College London. His interest in HIV began early as a young boy growing up in Zimbabwe in the 90s witnessing the devastation caused by the HIV pandemic. He developed the concept for our continuous diagnostic as a platform technology for diagnosis of HIV and other diseases. 

Our Scientific Advisors:

Catriona Wagner, PhD in Immunology - has a BS in Biological Sciences from Cal Poly and a PhD in Immunology from the University of Washington. Catriona has more than 9 years of biomedical research experience in immunology and autoimmunity.

Khoa Nguyen, PhD in Immunology - has a BSc. in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Immunology from Stanford University. Following his studies, Khoa founded Tranquis Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that focuses on the development of novel immunotherapeutics for neurological disorders. He has more than 15 years of research experience in various fields of life sciences, including immunology, neurology, oncology and physiology.

Michael James, PhD in Microbiology -  received his PhD in microbiology from the University of Iowa, conducting his undergraduate work in a virology laboratory with a focus on Human Papilloma Virus. Previously, Dr. James had completed an Emerging Infectious Disease fellowship with Centers for Disease Control working on projects related to detection and monitoring of viral and bacterial infection.

Advisors and Investors:

Suvabrata De, PhD in Quantum Computing
Shirley Nneamaka Ike, MENG in Chemical Engineering

Volunteer:

Tolu Fayese, BEng in Mechanical Engineering

We are committed to equal opportunity and diversity. Our team currently has 4 ethnicities represented and 3 female members.

We are seeking financial resources for our prototyping work as well as expertise and advice from the Solve community as we develop our solution.

We particularly interested in collaborating with partners that have research capability in immunology and virology animal models, whether in academia or industry.

The US is one of the markets we will target with our developed solution. We would use prize money towards producing our prototype and producing the HIV diagnostic for preclinical testing.