eWHORM Partners Present Key Advances at the 2025 ASTMH Annual Meeting

On 9–13 November, the annual meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) was held in Toronto, Canada. Several eWHORM partners attended the event and had the chance to present their latest research to a community of experts.

Prof. Jaap van Hellemond (Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands) presented new applications of virtual microscopy in the session “New Diagnostics and Surveillance of Parasitic Diseases.” Beyond AI-assisted microscopic detection of parasites in stool samples, virtual microscopy is increasingly being used in External Quality Assessment (EQA) schemes and in microscopist training. Recent advances in the development of the virtual learning tool (Work Package 5 of the eWHORM programme) were also showcased.

In the session “New Drugs for Treatment of Filarial Infections,” several novel filariasis drug candidates were discussed, including Corallopyronin A (Dr. Kenneth Pfarr, University Hospital Bonn, Germany), fusidic acid (Prof. Joseph Turner, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK), oxfendazole (Prof. Marc Hübner, University Hospital Bonn, Germany), emodepside (Dr. Sabine Specht, Bayer, Switzerland), and moxidectin (Dr. Philip Budge, Washington University, USA, and Dr. Joseph Larbi Opare, Ghana National NTD Control Programme). The eWHORM trial was presented as well, underscoring the advantages of an adaptive clinical basket trial using a master protocol to harmonize procedures. The trial is evaluating oxfendazole as a pan-nematode candidate across four sub-Saharan African countries against onchocerciasis, loiasis, mansonellosis, and trichuriasis.

Attendees were informed that the trichuriasis sub-study had been completed and is now undergoing data analysis, and that recruitment for the onchocerciasis and loiasis cohorts has started in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Gabon, respectively.