5^th International Conference on Neglected Tropical & Infectious Diseases August 29-30, 2018 Boston, MA, USA

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are the most common afflictions of the world's poorest people, affecting more than half a billion children around the world. It costs less than 50 cents per year to treat and protect one person from the most common NTDs. Most NTDs can be treated and prevented with medicine administered to entire communities at once in mass drug administrations (or MDAs). NTDs such as Schistosomiasis and Onchocerciasis are normally caused by worms or bacteria and occur in tropical climates. These diseases can be treated very cheaply using a 'rapid impact package' comprising five drugs that need only be taken once a year and do not require refrigeration. Such NTD interventions typically have a range of additional positive side effects.  Other NTDs can be managed through available, low-cost measures.

The emergence and re-emergence of old and new infectious diseases and its rapid spread to other parts of the globe are posing critical challenges in global heath. The reasons behind the spread of these types of vector population and global dispersion are rapid human development, including numerous changes in demographics, populations, the climate change and environmental imbalance. This has also led to zoonoses in the changing human-animal ecosystem, which are impacted by a growing globalized society where pathogens do not recognize geopolitical borders. Within this context, neglected tropical infectious diseases have historically lacked adequate attention in international public health efforts, leading to insufficient prevention and treatment options

Neglected Tropical Diseases(NTDs) are a diverse group of communicable diseases that mostly prevail in tropical and subtropical conditions. The main causative agents of NTDs are bacteria, parasites, viruses, helminths, protozoa and almost include 18 infectious diseases. They mostly affect populations living in poverty (generally children), without proper sanitation and in close contact with various infectious vectors and disease causing livestock’s, and causes significant health and financial burdens across the underdeveloped nations. NTDs are very common and sometimes fatal and they regularly infect humans. They are prevalent in 149 countries affecting more than 1.4 billion people costing developing economies billions of dollars every year and are responsible for millions of deaths and disabilities each year, across the globe.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a disease caused by four different strains of Ebola virus; these viruses infect humans and nonhuman primates. The West African Ebola virus epidemic (2013–2016) was the most widespread outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in history—causing major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in the countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. It caused significant mortality, with the case fatality rate reported at slightly above 70%, while the rate among hospitalized patients was 57–59%.

The arboviruses that cause dengue and chikungunya have rapidly amplified across the globe in recent years of this century, with havoc outbreaks in some territories in some closely attached areas of the United States (U.S.). Recently in March 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) provided the enlarged vector surveillance maps for A. aegypti and A. albopictus, the mosquito vectors for these arboviruses that are responsible for the recent global outbreaks. They have now been common and susceptible to a larger portion of the U.S. including densely populated northeast regions and some other parts of the globe.

Infectious diseases are disorders caused by organisms — such as bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites. Many organisms live in and on our bodies. They're normally harmless or even helpful, but under certain conditions, some organisms may cause disease.Some infectious diseases can be passed from person to person. Some are transmitted by bites from insects or animals. And others are acquired by ingesting contaminated food or water or being exposed to organisms in the environment.Signs and symptoms vary depending on the organism causing the infection, but often include fever and fatigue. Mild infections may respond to rest and home remedies, while some life-threatening infections may require hospitalization.Many infectious diseases, such as measles and chickenpox, can be prevented by vaccines. Frequent and thorough hand-washing also helps protect you from most infectious diseases.

The global top 6 infectious disease therapeutics market is expected to reach USD 86.2 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is primarily driven by increasing number of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Human Papillomavirus (HPV), TB, and hepatitis cases globally.

Viral infections are caused by a virus. Millions of types of virus are thought to exist, but only 5,000 types have been identified. Viruses contain a small piece of genetic code. They are protected by a coat of protein and fat. Not all viruses destroy their host cell. Some of them change the function of the cell. In this way, viruses such as human papillomavirus (HPV) or Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) can lead to cancer by forcing cells to replicate in an uncontrolled way.

Bacteria can live in almost any kind of environment, from extreme heat to intense cold, and some can even survive in radioactive waste.There are trillions of strains of bacteria, and few of these cause diseases in humans. 

There are approximately 51 million species of fungus.Many fungal infections will appear in the upper layers of the skin, and some progress to the deeper layers. Inhaled fungal spores can lead to systemic fungal infections, such as thrush, or candidiasis. 

An infectious disease that has newly appeared in a population or that has been known for some time but is rapidly increasing in incidence or geographic range. Examples of emerging infectious diseases include: Ebola virus, Hepatitis C,Influenza A(H5N1) ,Legionella pneumophila , E. coli O157:H7, and Borrelia burgdorferi.

Another example of an emerging infectious disease is the new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which was first described in 1996. The agent is considered to be the same as that causing bovine spongiform encephalitis, a disease which emerged in the 1980s and affected thousands of cattle in the UK and Europe.

The pathogenesis of a disease is the state of biological mechanism that leads to the diseased state. The term can also describe the origin and development of the disease, and whether it is acute or chronic. This process includes the pathogen that gets you sick, the method of how you got it, and what happened in the cells once it's in your body. It is the ability of the body to resist foreign harmful microorganisms, pathogens from entering it. Immunity involves both specific and nonspecific components. The nonspecific components of the immune system act like barriers or as eliminators for a wide range of pathogens irrespective of antigenic specificity. Other components of the immune system adapt themselves for each new disease encountered.

Antimicrobial resistance is a vital key issue that is leading to millions of deaths every year. Due to antimicrobial resistance, most infections now have become completely untreatable. All microbes usually develop resistance such as fungi develop antifungal resistance, protozoa are developing antiprotozoal resistance, viruses develop antiviral and lastly bacteria developing antibiotic resistance. Bacterial along with the viral antibiotic resistance poses the largest threat to infection prevention in masses, the reason why the use of the antibiotics should only be prescribed when it is most needed and also with a proper prescription by the physician. To prevent this issue of antimicrobial resistance, awareness should be made to use only Narrow-spectrum antibiotics rather than broad-spectrum antibiotics so that targeted effect can be achieved.

Vaccination is a process of administration of an antigenic material (vaccine) into a living mechanism. The clinical effect desired is to cause stimulation of an individual's immune system in order to develop an adaptive immunity against the pathogen constituting the vaccine. Vaccination is the most effective method of prevention for infectious diseases. Vaccine Adjuvants are components which potentiate the immune system and accelerate the immune responses to an antigen. It can also be termed as an immunologic adjuvant. These components act to induce, prolong, and enhance antigen-specific immune responses when used in combination with specific vaccine antigens.

Antimicrobial is the agent that kills or restricts the cell growth. To fight against the potential bacteria now-a-days, the manufacturing companies are coming up with more advanced antimicrobial liquids/soaps/sanitizers. Immunization/Vaccination is one of the most cost effective public health interventions to date, saving millions of lives1 and protecting countless children from illness and disability. As a direct result of immunization, polio is on the verge of eradication. Deaths from measles, a major child killer, declined by 71 per cent worldwide and by 80 per cent in sub Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2011.2 And 35 of 59 priority countries have eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus.

There is a compelling scarcity of pharmaceutical agents for efficacious, safe, and affordable treatment of neglected infectious or tropical diseases despite their high prevalence in the developing world. The current challenges in effective management of neglected diseases being the toxicity of drugs, microbial resistance patterns, and long courses of treatments. Factually Drug discovery is a comprehensively risky, lengthy and complex process. Interpreting the discovery of a novel therapeutic target into a clinical candidate can take several years. The regular drug discovery process requires the synthesis and evaluation of thousands of compounds for activity testing against multiple numbers of targets and off-targets. Starting from early discovery experiments, followed by translational studies in various animal models and then to clinical trials, there appears to be something wrong in this translation. The drop out of molecules when moved through the development chain, despite showing very promising activities in the in vitro models is high. The burden of drug discovery and development has fallen extensively to academic scientists and researchers who are involved in so-called translational research. A few focused private-sector groups, and some public–private partnerships, such as Medicines for MalariaVenture along with Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative and the Institute for One World Health, and many more getting collaborated to overcome the Neglected Tropical Diseases.

The developing world suffers the major burden of infectious disease, yet the range of drugs available for the treatment of many infectious diseases is limited. Moreover, some currently available drugs are difficult to access or administer in developing country settings, while others remain unaffordable at the patient or health facility level; meanwhile, there is increasing resistance to some drugs. Many new public-private partnerships are developing new drugs for the diseases of poverty and they need new leads to work from.

Vector-borne pathogens impact on public health, animal production, and animal welfare. Researches on various vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks, sandflies, and midges which transmit pathogens to humans are crucial for development of new control measures that target transmission by the vector. Novel and innovative tools for genetic manipulation and modifications of vectors, and some other biological vectors having good biological mechanisms with control mechanisms to prevent pathogen transmission have led to promising new developed strategies, adding a bold interest in vector biology and genetics both as vector-pathogen interactions. Vector research is therefore at a crucial juncture, with a lot of strategic decisions on future research directions and the investments.

As new technologies and methods are being developed every day, it is very much needed to further improve and innovate the filtering protocol with some more methods that can be helpful and used to increase the success rates of various researches in the biological and drug related discoveries. It includes high-throughput molecular techniques, uniquely called “omics” methods, have immensely increased our quality to classify the taxonomic and genetic structure of bacterial communities, so that their functional capabilities can be correctly estimated and the evaluation of the response to pathogens can be analysed correctly. Some of the used omics methods that are developed to date are sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, gene amplicon, and metabolomics. This technique now days is quite helpful in further innovations and findings of various therapeutics.

The World Health Organization has already declared 17 major pathogenic and related infections as the neglected tropical diseases. Despite various achievements in the understanding of the nature and universality of NTDs, as well as successes in recent scaled-up preventive chemotherapy methods and other health involvements, the NTDs continue to rank among the world’s foremost global health problems. For virtually all of the NTDs, additional control mechanisms and various advanced tools are needed, including, vaccines, diagnostics, and vector control agents and new NTD drugs strategies. Elimination will not be possible without implementation of various innovative tools. Here we will discuss some of the key challenges in translational science to develop and introduce these new innovative technologies in order to ensure success in global elimination efforts.

Translational research is precisely defined as the process of applying ideas, insights and discoveries generated through basic scientific inquiry to the treatment or prevention of infectious diseases. The recent evolution in next-generation sequencing techniques and the introduction of high-throughput methods has resulted in an explosive cascade of research applications, spanning from target identification to diagnostics and therapeutics. These technical advances have provided the impetus for some radical changes in the way research itself is conceived and performed.

Currently, various disease-specific technologies such as drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and vector control agents are available to facilitate the control or elimination of many of the world’s NTDs & Infectious Diseases . For most of these diseases drug, vaccine, diagnostic and vector control technologies are imperfect and have limited use because of their toxicities, inadequate efficacies, or because they do not prevent reinfection. Novel and innovative tools for genetic manipulation and modifications of biological mechanisms with control conditions will lead to development of various vaccines which would prevent pathogen transmission.

Despite the advancements and progress which has been made in the field of NTD’s & Infectious Diseases diagnostics over the past few years by some of the research organizations and other stakeholders, there remains a wide gap between the diseases and control. Of the 17 NTD’s & the for the wide number of Infectious Diseases on the WHO list almost 12 have a significant need for new and innovative diagnostic tests by various advance tools. It is therefore, very  important to understand how and where we use the existing tools to make sure that they are giving output in a quality assured manner. The strategy development process also revealed the following sections in the field of NTD’s & Infectious Diseases.

Vaccines and antimicrobials are among the most effective interventions in modern medicine, with far-reaching impacts on human health and disease. Effective vaccines are frequently unavailable in developing countries, and each year, millions of people die from vaccine-preventable and drug-treatable diseases. Furthermore, successful vaccines have yet to be developed for major global maladies, such as tuberculosis. In addition, technologies used to develop and manufacture vaccines are often outdated and not easily adaptable for rapidly responding to disease outbreaks, such as influenza. It can be difficult for manufacturers to successfully predict the dominant circulating influenza strains each season, and when new strains emerge suddenly, as in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, rapid preparation for distribution of a new vaccine can be challenging.