University of Surrey leads an international research programme on Tuberculosis.
Friday 5 March 2010
The Division of Microbial Sciences has recently been awarded £1.2 million for research on Tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is caused by the pathogenic bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which infects 9 million new people every year. Vaccination against M.tuberculosis is ineffective in adults and drug treatment takes six months, which is impractical in developing world settings where TB is most common.
Consequent non-compliance with treatment regimes has led to the emergence of drug resistance world-wide with practically incurable “extreme drug-resistant” strains appearing in many countries including UK.
Part of the funding is made up of two grants awarded from the Wellcome Trust and headed by Dr Graham Stewart and Professor Johnjoe McFadden, to investigate the interaction of M.tuberculosis with its host cell, focussing specifically on intracellular bacterial metabolism and bacterial control of host cell death.
The three successful bids are the result of the longstanding interdisciplinary collaboration within the Division of Microbial Sciences. The grants provide resources to strengthen the University of Surrey’s world-leading program in the application of Systems Biology approaches to Infection and Immunity. This program will provide significant contribution to the development of new therapeutic and vaccination strategies to combat tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
In addition, the Division of Microbial Sciences is the leading partner of an international consortium coordinated by Dr Andrzej Kierzek, which will apply interdisciplinary approaches to study the interaction between M. tuberculosis and its host cell. The consortium involves partners from CNRS (France), Institute Pasteur (France), Max Planck Institute (Germany) and University of Milan-Biococca (Italy).
Collaboration between these world-class experts will enable integration of high-throughput functional genomic approaches with computer simulations to characterise the molecular interaction networks involved in the parasitism of human macrophages and dendritic cells by M.tuberculosis.
The grants:
Integration of computational modelling with transcription and gene essentiality profiling of both MTB bacillus and infected human dendritic cells and macrophages to understand molecular interaction networks involved in the host-pathogen cross-talk
Andrzej M. Kierzek, Graham Stewart, Johnjoe McFadden, ERASysbioPlus call of BBSRC,
Total consortium budget: €1.5 M, Budget of the Surrey partner £ 0.6 M, 36 months.
Investigation of substrate utilization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Johnjoe McFadden, Dany Beste, Graham Stewart, Andrzej M. Kierzek.
Wellcome Trust £405,000, for 36 months.
Inhibition of Apoptosis by Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Graham Stewart and Rachel Shrimpton
Wellcome Trust, £217,000 for 36 months
