The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began its new Prometheus program on Monday to identify prognostic biomarkers that indicate contagiousness following infection but prior to symptoms appearing in a patient.
Prometheus will seek to discover a minimal set of molecular biomarkers that would indicate whether an individual will become contagious less than 24 hours after exposure to a pathogen. The window is minimal enough to allow for early treatment before a person begins infecting others. Biomarkers, which are measurable indicators of the severity or presence of disease, may assist researchers predict the onset of contagiousness. Additionally, the biomarkers may help predict viral replication well before there is a measurable amount of virus to be detected by contemporary methods.
“Many infections are spread by people who haven’t yet displayed symptoms of their illness,” Matt Hepburn, program manager for Prometheus, said. “These people don’t know they are sick, so they often end up spreading the disease to close contacts. Our goal with Prometheus is to develop techniques that could alert people that they are likely to become contagious, so they can proactively take steps to keep the disease from spreading.”
The Prometheus initiative will focus for the moment on acute respiratory infections, with researchers setting out to develop an understanding of biological responses in a recently infected patient.