RSM World TB day conference 2019: Recent progress and the path towards elimination

SATVI is a world leader in TB vaccine clinical research. Their mission is the development of new and effective vaccination strategies against tuberculosis (TB). They are testing multiple new vaccine candidates in clinical trials; and are involved with projects to address critical clinical, epidemiological, immunological and human genetic questions in TB vaccine development. Activities are within an academic context, and thus include the training of postgraduate students. 

The team of over 100 staff consists of specialists in: clinical, epidemiological, human genetic and immunologic science, clinical trials, community liaison, recruitment and follow-up; data management and analysis, disease surveillance, information technology, clinical evaluation and care of participants; facility management, laboratory technology, logistics, research pharmacy management, project management, regulatory affairs, administration, study coordination and training. 

Professor Hatherill’s clinical research interests have focused on design, implementation, and analysis of clinical trials of BCG vaccine and novel TB vaccines candidates; diagnostic studies of TB infection and disease in adult and paediatric study populations; and TB therapeutic clinical trials. A major new project will test targeted TB preventive therapy for high risk persons identified by a novel transcriptomic correlate of risk assay.

Further details are found here [www.satvi.uct.ac.za]

Ajit Lalvani is Head of Respiratory Infection and Director of the TB Research Centre at IC. He invented and validated the paradigm of T cell-based diagnosis (ELISpot-IGRA), the NICE-approved standard-of-care for LTBI which transformed TB control and prevention nationally and internationally. His more recent work dissected the epidemiology of TB in the UK, systematically assessed and critiqued existing policy and practice for new-entrant TB screening and developed a new cost-effective strategy to identify >90% of imported latent TB.

Dr Sarah Anderson is Head of TB Strategy at Public Health England and in this role, is leading the implementation of the Collaborative TB Strategy for England, 2015-2020. Sarah previously worked as a London Regional Epidemiologist, a Consultant in Health Protection and as PHE London’s TB lead. She is currently a member of the Technical Advisory Group on TB for the WHO Regional Office for Europe and has recently been invited to join the European Sciana Health Leaders Network.

Sarah trained as a doctor in Cambridge and London and undertook a medical doctorate researching ‘The epidemiology of TB from a primary care perspective’. She has spent time seconded to the WHO, Stop TB Department in Geneva where she published research on improving international TB and HIV collaboration; and has an academic interest in TB with a number of on-going TB research projects; publishing most recently as part of the PREDICT Study: ‘Prognostic value of interferon-γ release assays and tuberculin skin test in predicting the development of active tuberculosis: a prospective cohort study’ in Lancet Infectious Diseases and in Thorax a ‘Reduction in tuberculosis incidence in the UK from 2011 to 2015: a population-based study’.

In 2019, Sarah will be awarded the Bisset Hawkins Medal of the Royal College of Physicians, a triennial award, given to acknowledge work undertaken in the preceding ten years to advance sanitary science or promote public health.

Dr Alice Halliday received her BSc in Microbiology from the University of Manchester in 2008. She subsequently worked as a research assistant on an NHS-funded project exploring health care needs in relation to immunisation uptake in Manchester. She then moved back to laboratory science, gaining a PhD from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) exploring the immune responses to Leishmania infection. Her first postdoc, also at LSTM, involved the development of models of Onchocerciasis for drug screening, both in the UK and in Cameroon.

In 2014, Dr Halliday moved to Imperial College where her work has been focused on exploring cellular immune responses in Tuberculosis, with a particular interest in the development of new diagnostic tools. By interogating immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens using flow cytometry, it has been shown that it is possible to differentiate between different stages of Tuberculosis infection in humans. Dr Halliday aims to validate this approach using large biobanks of samples, taken from patients with the full spectrum of active and latent Tuberculosis infection, with the aim of developing improved diagnostic tests. 

Professor Grace Smith oversees a very active clinical practice in acute bacteriology and primary and reference mycobacteriology in a high incidence area. She has led the introduction of MIRU VNTR typing into regular clinical service.

A clinical academic who gained her medical degree at the University of Oxford, along with a bachelor’s degree in Physiology, hospital junior doctor jobs developed Esther’s interest in infection and antibiotic resistance. This work led to a training programme in medical microbiology and virology, initially in the West Midlands and later in Oxford.

Her DPhil thesis, with Professor Derrick Crook of the Modernising Medical Microbiology consortium in Oxford, was on horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance. She has also collaborated with work on transferable genetic elements in Clostridium difficile and multiply-resistant gram negative organisms.

As a clinician, she deals daily with the challenges of hospital-acquired infection and antibiotic resistance and this directly stimulates her research, where she is developing her interests in the genomic epidemiology of bacteria and their resistance genes, alongside an honorary consultant medical microbiologist post at the Heart of England Foundation Trust.

Dr Pranab Haldar research includes TB prevention strategies and the epidemiology of M.tuberculosis infection, with a particular focus on the utility of diagnostic tools for characterising future TB risk and their implementation in screening programs; and role of eosinophilic inflammation in the clinical expression of asthma.