For over 50 years, the tools for diagnosing, preventing, and treating syphilis have seen minimal progress, partly due to limitations in bacterial cultivation. Existing tools were primarily drawn from research on early-stage syphilis and evidence extrapolated to severe forms of the infection, leaving important unmet needs like the lack of predictive markers for neurosyphilis and mother-to-child-transmission, limited evidence on treatments for these conditions, and challenges in monitoring treatment failure. This project aims to shift the paradigm by demonstrating that the diverse manifestations of syphilis are not merely random infections in different bodily compartments but are intricately linked to unique bacterial traits and host responses that necessitate specific tools. Our goal is to discover manifestation-specific biomarkers, repurpose antibiotics for tailored treatments, and pioneering TPA isolation methods for treatment monitoring. Taking advantage of a unique network of collaborators in areas with a high incidence of severe syphilis, I will examine how severe clinical manifestations relate to genomic variations in TPA strains and with host humoral responses. A groundbreaking pan-proteomic array will allow identifying markers linked to clinical phenotypes and it will open avenues for discovery of new antigens as vaccine candidates. Furthermore, I will exploit the established expertise of my team on drug repurposing and conducting randomized clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of alternative antibiotics to cure patients with neurosyphilis and syphilis in pregnancy. Finally, I aim to pioneer methods for the first-time isolation of TPA from patient samples and conduct antimicrobial resistance testing in treatment failures. The resulting tools will be a tremendous resource for preventing adverse outcomes like neurological sequelae, stillbirth, congenital syphilis and treatment failure, especially in low-middle-income countries where most complications occur

FRESH AIR is a 3 year project which addresses the urgent need to prevent, diagnose and treat lung diseases in LMICs and other low-resource settings where the greatest burden of disease is experienced. Our Consortium brings together leading international respiratory researchers, clinicians and policy experts from EU member states and the US who have expertise and experience of the challenges of implementation in LMICs and healthcare providers, policy makers and implementers from four countries that represent very different low-resource settings. Members will work together to adapt and test innovation and evidence-based practice in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of lung disease in four low-resource settings in Uganda, Kyrgyz Republic, Vietnam and Greece with high levels of tobacco consumption and exposure to Household Air Pollution (HAP). In so doing, the Consortium will transfer skills and technology from EU member states and the US to new contexts and explore a range of implementation science research questions. The new knowledge this generates will be widely disseminated nationally, regionally and internationally, ensuring the scale-up of interventions tested by the project and global impact of research findings. The project will also provide new perspectives on policy issues of concern to EU members, increase the international profile of EU funded research on key health challenges and open up markets for healthcare innovations. The project has 7 specific objectives focused on the following: 1. Identifying factors influencing the implementation of evidenced-based interventions 2. Exploring which awareness-raising approaches are most effective in achieving behaviour change 3. Adapting interventions that provide smoking cessation support 4. Testing innovative diagnostic methods for COPD 5. Promoting pulmonary rehabilitation as a low cost treatment 6. Reducing children’s risk of lung damage 7. Generating new knowledge, innovation and scalable models.