NCOH research gets ZonMw grant

ZonMw is making 2.5 million euros available to the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH) for research into pandemic preparedness. The research partners within NCOH are working together to prevent a situation such as the corona pandemic in the future. “ZonMw’s contribution supports our research into strengthening pandemic preparedness in the Netherlands,” says NCOH chair Annemarie Rebel.

Annemarie Rebel
Annemarie Rebel
Dick Heederik (UU), Marc Bonten (UMC Utrecht), Marion Koopmans (Erasmus MC) and Annemarie Rebel (Wageningen University & Research and chair NCOH) jointly submitted the application from the NCOH. The research into pandemic preparedness funded by ZonMw is in line with a National Growth Fund application that NCOH previously submitted in collaboration with the Pandemic & Disease Preparedness Centre (PDPC). “We are extremely pleased that ZonMw has granted this funding. Now we can start working on important lessons learned from the corona pandemic,” says Heederik (Utrecht University).

Cooperation
How can we detect a possible pandemic at an early stage and work together more effectively? This is one of the central questions in the research funded by ZonMw. Corona has shown that a seemingly harmless pathogen can suddenly change its character and cause a pandemic.

Analyses of the coronavirus pandemic revealed a number of shortcomings. For example, there was a lack of methods to provide early warning of emerging infectious diseases. It also proved difficult to reliably assess the main characteristics of pathogens and not easy to measure the virus in the air as part of transmission research. Developments in the field of mathematical models are moving fast. For example, models are becoming available to predict the development of pathogens. It is important to gain experience with this and to further develop the models. Moreover, the strategies for detecting pathogens in humans and animals are currently not compatible. This needs to be done differently and more integrated, NCOH believes. “It is precisely at this point that we, as partners within NCOH, can be of great significance in preparing for a potential pandemic,” Rebel says. “Within NCOH we connect knowledge about humans, animals, pathogens, modelling, environment and interactions between them. Optimizing knowledge exchange makes an important contribution to pandemic preparedness in the Netherlands.”

Research
With the awarded funding, 24 postdocs can do a year of research at the various partner institutes of NCOH. It is initially a one-year program. The NCOH partners hope to continue the research afterwards.