Phase II
During phase II, the REDI-NET program will generate evidence through two levels of laboratories to evaluate three hypotheses using descriptive analyses that informed improvement in forecasting potential risk of exposure for local communities. Gold labs include the University of Notre Dame, the Naval Medical Research Center, and the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. Silver labs consist of the Belize Vector and Ecology Center (Belize), the Navy Entomology Center of Excellence (USA), and the Mpala Research Centre (Kenya). The inclusion of external partnerships will enable the expansion of the pathogen portfolio through opportunistic sampling.
The hypotheses to be evaluated during phase II:
- Expansion of pathogen portfolio to include vertebrate DNA
- Validation of the e-MERGE pipeline
- Knowledge transfer to key CONUS and OCONUS stakeholders
Central to the REDI-NET Phase II goals is the expansion of the e-MERGE pipeline developed in Phase I. The unique e-MERGE remote pathogen-detection pipeline is fully flexible, scalable, and expandable, making integrating data generated during Phase II seamless, including data from other sample types. Reach-back CONUS Gold labs will be able to access and support the cross-seasonal environmental pathogen monitoring of the forward-facing OCONUS Silver labs, in real-time. This core functionality, facilitated by stringent, robust SOPs will ensure a unified data collection, processing, and sharing strategy from remote global theatres that will facilitate rapid, automated downstream analyses of field-generated NGS data and instantaneous upload of accurate, verified results to the REDI-NET project alert dashboard. Data will be in formats for ready submission to the inter-relational VectorMap VectorBase (VMVB) geo-, genetic, and genomic data repositories to facilitate transparency and data sharing with other interested parties through an Application Programming Interface (API). The established REDI-NET e-MERGE pipeline developed from Phase I will serve as the platform for enhancement in Phase II for timely detection and mitigation of potential zoonotic pathogen spillover events in remote theatres.
Phase II Study Design
