Roadmap for development of diagnostic tests for helminths

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

• The isolation of helminth stages (e.g. helminth eggs/larvae) is pivotal in order to study molecular mechanisms of anthelmintic resistance and to perform in-vitro phenotypic tests for resistance such as egg hatch assays and larval development/feeding assays
• Isolation of helminth eggs/larvae to assess infection pressures, environmental contamination and changes in parasite epidemiology eg. due to climate change.

What are the scientific and technological challenges (knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

Need of rapid systems for egg/larvae isolation from fecal and environmental samples which provide reliable and
representative data on eg. environmental contamination, anthelmintic resistance.

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

• Develop quick and reliable methods for helminth egg/larvae recovery and isolation
• Develop a specific and accurate method for larvae detection on the pasture
• Develop accurate , sensitive, practical and scalable methods for environmental (eg, soil and pasture) sampling.
• Develop, improve and validate new phenotypic assays on harvested parasite stages to determine drug sensitivity and diagnose anthelmintic resistance eg. Egg hatching, larval development , larval motility assays .

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

Existing knowledge including successes and failures

• Current methods used for the isolation of parasitic stages (e.g. helminth eggs and larvae) for further analysis (e.g. in-vitro assays and molecular tests) are time consuming and do not guarantee full recovery of eggs/larvae
• Methods for environmental sampling not well developed or validated.