Professor Jonathan Carapetis
Executive Director
The Kids Research Institute Australia
It is the nastiest bug you’ve probably never heard of; the fifth most lethal pathogen in the world.
For most, Strep A causes a sore throat. However, this relatively common bacterium can quickly become deadly.
Sepsis is the leading cause of early childhood death globally with more than four million children dying from the illness every year. There are many bugs that cause sepsis, but Strep A is among the most common and deadly, and can affect any child.
It is the bacterium responsible for the death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath at Perth Children’s Hospital in 2021. Like meningococcal disease, time is critical when it comes to Strep A – a child can go from being perfectly healthy to the brink of death in just hours.
Invasive Strep A can also cause pneumonia, septicaemia, meningitis, bone and joint infections, scarlet fever, toxic shock syndrome and flesh-eating disease. The bug is also responsible for other devastating diseases including rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease and kidney disease.
The Strep A bacterium is easily spread and like many infectious diseases, disproportionately affects infants and the elderly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and people with a low immune system or chronic disease. But nobody is immune from this bug. It kills more than 500,000 people every year.
In Perth, The Kids Research Institute Australia is spearheading global efforts to tackle this insidious bacterium and reduce its impact on kids’ health.
We are the headquarters for the world’s leading program to develop a safe and effective vaccine against Strep A. Partnering with industry, public health organisations and academic institutes across the globe, we are working to fast-track the first in-human studies of a vaccine candidate.
Evidence from other serious invasive infections tells us that a vaccine would have a major impact in protecting kids from sepsis.
But while a vaccine would undoubtedly be a massive breakthrough for invasive Strep A, and would likely have a big impact on other diseases like rheumatic heart disease, we know that it is not a magic bullet. So The Kids is tackling Strep A on multiple fronts.
Led by our Wesfarmers Centre for Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, we are accelerating research to develop a faster, accurate diagnostic tool to identify whether a child has sepsis to ensure quicker access to lifesaving treatment.
We are also well advanced in developing a world-first diagnostic test for rheumatic fever, which would be a major advance in Australia and in all developing countries. And we are developing a new penicillin injection that lasts longer and is considerably less painful than what we have now, so patients do not avoid this critical treatment to prevent rheumatic fever recurrences.
Indeed, our approach to rheumatic heart disease is tackling every angle, from reducing exposure to Strep A in the first place, right through to preventing severe complications when rheumatic fever does happen.
Critically, The Kids is approaching these multi-faceted research priorities guided by those who live with these diseases and their consequences every day. We are fortunate to have the leadership of Aboriginal controlled health organisations and communities who have great insight into the complexities of tackling this disease, and are highly effective advocates for families with lived experience, to ensure that our research delivers what is really needed.
By working together, it is our ambition that within the next decade we will have a vaccine for Strep A, we will be able to diagnose these diseases more accurately and quickly, we will address critical environmental challenges, and treatments for the worst complications of the bug will be more effective and less painful.
We are committed to eliminating the suffering and deaths caused by this deadly bacterium.
Professor Carapetis delivered The Kids’ Governor’s Lecture 2024 ‘Not just a sore throat: The race to stop one of the deadliest bugs on the planet’ on Tuesday.