Welcome to the official website of TMRC Project – Sri Lanka.
We are a research center funded through a grant facilitated by National Institute of Health, USA, incorporated with the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The collaborations built through the TMRC award are designed to facilitate research on the cause, diagnosis, disease pathology, pathogenesis, effective disease management, prevention, control and to create and sustain in-country research capacity with strengthened international collaborations on Leishmaniasis disease. The ongoing studies continue to provide critical information in a systematic manner, on many aspects of leishmaniasis with a special focus on diagnosis, patient management, epidemiology, vector ecology and transmission, which are desperately needed for national-level planning of leishmaniasis control and subsequent elimination both in Sri Lanka and Bhutan. The project is supervised and guided by Senior Professor Nadira Karunaweera and Senior Professor and Chair of Parasitology in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine, USA and the Khesar-Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan.
We are one of the seven TMRC research centers located throughout world, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) , National Institute of Health (NIH),USA through a highly competitive and respected TMRC grant awarded once in every five years. After the award was granted in the year of 2017, the research project was initiated by a team at the Parasitic Disease Research Unit (PDRU), Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo. This funding support from the NIH, USA to the University of Colombo in 2017, was a continuation of financial support that started in 2012 through an R01 Award (NIH AI099602) that sponsored the pioneering research program on Leishmaniasis that Sr.Prof. Karunaweera and her team continues since the year 2001 (with the initial funding support coming from the National Science Foundation, Sri Lanka and the University of Colombo).
The concentration of the study is mainly divided into three parts.
- Understanding the occurrence, the disease process in humans, it’s management and the spread of leishmaniasis in Sri Lanka and Bhutan using biological, epidemiological and molecular tools.
- Dissecting the role and properties of the vector and its environment to enable infection control in Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
- Investigating genetic factors in Phlebotomus argentipes associated with transmission efficiency and dynamics in Sri Lanka.
One of the main responsibilities of TMRC is to communicate the new science it discovers to a range of audiences, such as the general public, scientific community, university students, and school children. It carries out various programs throughout the year to fulfill this responsibility using many channels especially social media platforms.
Dr. Leonard’s visit to PDRU
Training for Technical Officers from Bhutan at the PDRU laboratory on molecular identification of leishmaniasis
