Research priorities per disease area

This page provides a quick and non-binding summary of the research priorities outlined in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda. 

Goal: Support achieving UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets.

• Focus on priority populations: infants, children, pregnant women, stigmatised, discriminated and criminalised populations.
• Focus on coinfections and comorbidities.
• Address HIV drug resistance and promote access to resistance testing.
• Deliver new prevention technologies (long-acting PrEP, broadly neutralising antibodies, vaccines).
• Advance community-driven and people-centred approaches to treatment and prevention.

Goal: End the TB epidemic by 2035.

• Develop shorter, effective treatment regimens for all TB forms.
• Develop and evaluate novel approaches for the early diagnosis of active TB.
• Shorten the duration of therapy.
• Improve treatments for both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB.
• Prevent relapse.
• Reduce drug resistance.
• Prevent long-term lung damage.
• Prevent latent TB infection from progressing to active TB.
• Improve point-of-care diagnostics and drug resistance testing.
• Develop host-directed therapies that can shorten the duration of therapy and improve treatment outcomes.
• Evaluate adjunct host-directed therapies based on repurposed drugs, cellular therapies, and other immunomodulatory.
• Emphasise implementation research and integrated TB-HIV care.
• Support host-directed therapies and coinfection studies (especially HIV-TB).

Goal: End the malaria epidemic by 2030.

• Prioritise children, pregnant women, adolescents, and vulnerable groups.
• Evaluate integration with other treatments (e.g. HIV/TB).
• Develop novel tools to treat and prevent malaria in early pregnancy.
• Support field-testing diagnostics, vector control, and elimination strategies.
• Develop new drugs, single-dose therapies, and chemoprevention tools.
• Field-test diagnostics to identify low-level infections and resistance.
• Advance malaria vaccines (sporozoite, blood-stage, transmission-blocking).

Goal: Eliminate NIDs and ensure effective delivery of health.

• Develop precise diagnostic tools, improved treatments, novel drugs, and vaccines.
• Investigate co-infections with malaria, TB, HIV, and non-communicable diseases.
• Emphasise disease prevention, effective management, and vector control.
• Conduct clinical trials of combination therapies and evaluate delivery models for preventive chemotherapy.
• Promote integration of NID care into people-centred universal health systems.
• Support early-phase clinical trials where no effective treatments currently exist.
• Advance vector control and integrated disease control strategies for vector-borne NIDs.
• Strengthen clinical and regulatory infrastructure to support local health systems and sustain progress.

See the list of NIDs in the scope of Global Health EDCTP3

Goal: Reduce the burden of diarrhoeal diseases and end preventable deaths of children under 5 years of age.

• Support development and delivery of new vaccines (e.g. rotavirus, Shigella, cholera, enterotoxigenic E. coli, Cryptosporidium, norovirus).
• Advance research in innovative delivery mechanisms, including combination vaccines.
• Support point-of-care diagnostics and enhance laboratory capacity.

Goal: Reduce preventable deaths, especially in children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised.

• Support new and improved point-of-care diagnostics and imaging tools.
• Short-duration trials of antibiotic treatments.
• Evaluate host-directed therapies to strengthen immunity and improve outcomes.
• Enhance low-cost oxygen delivery methods for hypoxaemia in children.
• Develop and evaluate vaccines, including maternal ones.
• Prioritise research in high-risk populations and under-researched pathogens.
• Prioritise pathogens with existing or in-development vaccines: group B streptococci (GBS), respiratory syncytial virus (SRV), pneumococcus, and cytomegalovirus (CMV).

Goal: Strengthen preparedness, prevention and response capacities in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Maintain emergency funding for rapid outbreak response.
• Strengthen surveillance and laboratory systems for early detection and diagnosis.
• Develop regional data hubs linking genomics and clinical data to inform swift public health actions.
• Build local capacity for a tailored, resilient public health approach for sub-Saharan Africa.
• Promote adaptive platform trials and harmonised master protocols; support trial design and regulatory readiness.
• Invest in community engagement, participatory research, and social sciences to combat misinformation and stigma.

Goal: Reduce the health impacts of climate-driven increases in infectious diseases.

• Support research to understand links between climate conditions and disease outbreaks.
• Evaluate and strengthen public health responses and infrastructure.
• Invest in surveillance, emergency response systems, and vector control.
• Promote public health training as a key climate adaptation strategy.

Goal: Mitigate the impact of AMR on infectious disease control in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Prioritise poverty-related and neglected diseases most affected by AMR and posing major health security risks.
• Develop novel treatments and point-of-care diagnostics to guide antibiotic use.
• Promote antibiotic stewardship and digital health tools to reduce misuse.
• Advance vaccines and immune-based interventions to lower infection burden.
• Support research to update treatment guidelines based on resistance patterns.