Tuberculosis

Glycans are an important component of surface molecules in tuberculosis but their role in protective immunity is still largely unexplored. Carlos Rivera-Marrero and Richard D. Cumming of Emory University in the U.S. will develop high-throughput glycan microarrays to identify glycan antigens, determine their chemical structure, and design glycan-peptide vaccines for future testing.

Melody Swartz and Jeffrey Hubbell of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, will explore the use of a robust and inexpensive nanotechnology, which may penetrate lymph tissue to more effectively trigger immune responses, as a new tool for prevention of TB.

Jinhee Lee and Gary Ostroff of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the U.S. will test the idea of delivering small interfering RNA (siRNAs) via glucan particles in an oral TB vaccine formulation. The team will utilize the siRNAs' ability to block immunosuppressive signaling and amplify the immune response.

Eric Nuermberger and Justin Hanes of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. propose to encapsulate vaccine components into nanoparticles that can slip through the mucus barriers lining the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts to deliver their payload to cells responsible for immune responses. This technology may result in more effective and better tolerated oral and inhaled tuberculosis vaccines.

Linda Stewart and Irene Grant of Queen's University, Belfast in the United Kingdom have developed an immunoassay to help determine the incidence of Mycobacterium bovis, which causes tuberculosis in humans and cattle at currently unknown levels. Tuberculosis caused by M.bovis is resistant to a drug commonly used to treat tuberculosis caused by the more prevalent M. tuberculosis, but the diseases are indistinguishable.

Naoru Koizumi of George Mason University in the U.S. will evaluate whether offering individuals a choice between different information and communication technologies (ICTs) will increase adherence to treatment for tuberculosis, which lasts six months. Treatment compliance particularly in urban poor populations is low, leading to the emergence of dangerous multi-drug resistant strains of the tuberculosis bacterium. Current methods used to increase compliance, such as sending SMS reminders and financial incentives, do not suit every patient.

Babak Javid of Tsinghua University School of Medicine in China will determine whether drugs that increase the accuracy of protein production in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes TB, can boost the effect of existing TB drugs and thereby shorten the current 6 month treatment period. They hypothesized that resistance to TB drugs is caused in part by the ability of the bacterium to change its proteins by making random errors during their synthesis (known as mistranslation).

Feng Qian of Tsinghua University in China will work to develop an inhaled drug particle using a scalable formulation process to deliver tuberculosis drugs directly into the lungs. They will develop micro-particles containing current TB drugs and will test their utility when inhaled.

Haiteng Deng of Tsinghua University in China will identify new candidate antigens for vaccines to prevent tuberculosis.

Javid, Zhu, and colleagues of Tsinghua University in China have developed a strategy to isolate phenotypically-resistant mycobacteria. They will therefore be able to identify small molecules that are specific for this subpopulation as opposed to the bulk tuberculosis population, which may in turn identify pathways to accelerate TB therapy.