Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED)
The 2nd Brazil-Japan Collaborative Research Workshop on Zika virus was held at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Tokyo, Japan on July 26, 2018.
Since the outbreak of Zika virus in 2015 in Brazil and South America, AMED has been working on the theme as one of its research priorities, and has been supporting research such as development of rapid diagnostics and vaccines for the Zika virus. It signed the Statement on Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies on February 2016.
This workshop was hosted by the AMED-funded research project group “Establishing surveillance system for the risk of outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging insect-borne diseases in Japan and developing comprehensive insect-borne virus control system” (principal investigator: Dr. Chang-Kweng Lim).
Japanese researchers from NIID, Nagasaki University, Canon Medical Systems, Inc. and other institutes, Brazilian researchers from Laboratory of Immunopathology Keizo Asami (LIKA), Federal University of Pernambuco, and the Federal University of Paraiba participated in the workshop and discussed the research collaboration between Japan and Brazil for the past and coming years.
In this 2nd workshop held on July 2018, the research collaborations and achievements in the past two years were shared with more than 80 participants from both Japan and Brazil, and the participants had a lively discussion on what can be done with the fruitful achievements. In particular, big achievements of the two years of collaborative research were presented, such as development of Zika virus rapid diagnostic kit (officially approved for manufacture and sale in Japan), and development of pathological diagnosis for Zika and other congenital infections by utilizing placenta collected at those endemic areas in Northeast of Brazil.