Intervening along the spectrum of tuberculosis: meeting report from the World TB Day nanosymposium in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town

Sabelo Hadebe; Melissa Chengalroyen; Reto Guler; Kehilwe Nakedi; Anastasia Koch; Mohau Makatsa; Muki Shey; Suraj P Parihar; Bryan Bryson; Mohlopheni J Marakalala; Hlumani Ndlovu

doi:10.12688/gatesopenres.13035.4

Intervening along the spectrum of tuberculosis: meeting report from the World TB Day nanosymposium in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town

Gates Open Res. 2020 May 28:3:1491. doi: 10.12688/gatesopenres.13035.4. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Sabelo Hadebe¹, Melissa Chengalroyen², Reto Guler^{1

3

4}, Kehilwe Nakedi⁵, Anastasia Koch², Mohau Makatsa⁶, Muki Shey⁴, Suraj P Parihar⁴, Bryan Bryson⁷, Mohlopheni J Marakalala^{8

9}, Hlumani Ndlovu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Division of Immunology and South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Immunology of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine (IDM), Cape Town, Westen Cape, 7925, South Africa.
² SAMRC/NHLS/UCT Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit, Molecular Mycobacteriology unit, Division of Medical Microbiology, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine based (IDM), University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, 7925, South Africa.
³ Department of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Cape Town Component, Cape Town, Westen Cape, 7925, South Africa.
⁴ Wellcome Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in Africa (CIDRI-Africa), Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine (IDM) & Department of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, 7925, South Africa.
⁵ Division of Chemical and Systems Biology, Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, 7925, South Africa.
⁶ Division of Medical Virology, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Westen Cape, 7925, South Africa.
⁷ MIT Biological Engineering, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MA 02142, USA.
⁸ Africa Health Research Institute, South Africa, Durban, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
⁹ Division of Infection and Immunity, University College London, London, South Africa.

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the highly infectious Mycobacterium tuberculosis, remains a leading cause of death worldwide, with an estimated 1.6 million associated deaths reported in 2017. In South Africa, an estimated 322,000 (range 230,000-428,000) people were infected with TB in 2017, and a quarter of them lost their lives due to the disease. Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) remains the only effective vaccine against disseminated TB, but its inability to confer complete protection against pulmonary TB in adolescents and adults calls for an urgent need to develop new and better vaccines. There is also a need to identify markers of disease protection and develop novel drugs. It is within this backdrop that we convened a nanosymposium at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town to commemorate World TB Day and showcase recent findings generated by early career scientists in the institute. The speakers spoke on four broad topics: identification of novel drug targets, development of host-directed drug therapies, transmission of TB and immunology of TB/HIV co-infections.

Keywords: Host directed Therapies; TB/HIV co-infections; Tuberculosis; new tools; transmission.

Grants and funding

WT_/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom