Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF)

Published on April 30th 2024

Welcome to our very first newsletter! It's been an exciting quarter at CHRF filled with milestones: our scientists achieved breakthroughs in single-cell genomics, represented Bangladesh in global conferences, and looked for viruses in sewage water to understand typhoid burden. Dive in for more details!

First Single-Cell Genomic Data from Bangladesh

As part of the 'Global Pediatric Cell Atlas of Nasal & Oral Mucosa' project, our scientists collected and processed nasopharyngeal swab samples from children in rural Bangladesh, both with and without viral infections. This research aims to understand how the immune system develops among children worldwide, with CHRF representing data from Bangladesh.

Read some of our media mentions in local news portals including

Read our press release here!

Tackling pneumonia in Bangladesh - CHRF at ISPPD

Here's what our scientists were up to at the '13th Meeting of the International Society of Pneumonia and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD)' in Cape Town:

8 members discussed our research findings as the only Bangladeshi site for the Global Pneumococcal Sequencing Project
7 research abstracts were selected from CHRF, with 5 of our members receiving Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Travel Awards
Our associate scientist, Arif Tanmoy, PhD presented a spotlight poster on the evolution of pneumococcal serotype-1 in Bangladesh
Our scientist, Yogesh Hooda, PhD gave a talk at the Global Pneumococcal Sequencing (GPS) meeting illuminating the global genomic epidemiology of pneumococcal serotype 2 isolates spanning over 3 decades (1989-2022)

Click to read our blog on ISPPD!

Special Highlights

We thank Gavi The Vaccine Alliance for writing a feature on our nationwide environmental surveillance. Our team is looking for viruses in sewage water collected from all districts of Bangladesh to understand the typhoid burden and prioritise areas for vaccine introduction.

Read the whole article here!

Our Recent Publications

BMJ

Code sharing and artificial intelligence can help decolonise public health modelling

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Old tools, new applications: Use of environmental bacteriophages for typhoid surveillance and evaluating vaccine impact

eClinicalMedicine (part of The Lancet Discovery Science)

Safety and efficacy of whole-body chlorhexidine gluconate cleansing with or without emollient in hospitalised neonates (NeoCHG): a multicentre, randomised, open-label, factorial pilot trial

The Journal of Pediatrics

Young Infant Mortality Associated with Preterm and Small-for-gestational-age Births in Rural Bangladesh: A prospective cohort study

BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology

Neonatal mortality risk of vulnerable newborns by fine stratum of gestational age and birthweight for 230 679 live births in nine low- and middle-income countries, 2000–2017

Vaccine

Effectiveness of ten-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine on invasive pneumococcal disease among children <2 years old: A prospective population-based study in rural Bangladesh

The Lancet Global Health

Estimating the subnational prevalence of antimicrobial resistant Salmonella enterica serovars Typhi and Paratyphi A infections in 75 endemic countries, 1990–2019: a modelling study

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Detection of Salmonella Typhi bacteriophages in surface waters as a scalable approach to environmental surveillance

PLOS Global Public Health

A handheld luminometer with sub-attomole limit of detection for distributed applications in global health

Insights from fellow scientists: talks at CHRF

When scientists become friends, amazing things happen! We are delighted to have had the opportunity to host some brilliant minds at CHRF this quarter.

Ms Faith Taliaferro & Ms Jaclyn Long from the Ordovas-Montanes Lab presented their work in collaboration with our single-cell genomics team.

Senior Scientist at Pfizer, Abdul Mohin Sajib, PhD talked about improving the safety and efficacy of viral/nonviral mediated gene therapy.

Members of CAMO-Net, a Wellcome funded, multidisciplinary, global collaboration, spent 3 days at CHRF, a national site of the consortium.

The High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Canada, Dr Khalilur Rahman, PhD, shared his journey of working in the public health sector with us.

Associate Computational Biologist at the Broad Institute, Aonkon Dey, taught us the essentials of Single-cell RNAseq Data Analysis.

Prof Lafifa Jamal from Dhaka University's Dep. of Robotics & Mechatronics Engineering spent an afternoon with us, delving into topics ranging from robot hands to DNA strands.

Abhilasha Karkey, PhD shared her experience of investigating infectious diseases and running the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Nepal.

Upcoming training programs and workshops at CHRF

At CHRF, we are Building Scientists for Bangladesh by setting up science camps and offering training courses for school students, undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals. Applications are open all year round!