On 24 March, the world commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We take this opportunity each year to highlight contemporary research innovation and future challenges in a one-day symposium co-organised by LSHTM and UCL.
For the 2018 event, our audience - in person at the John Snow Lecture Theatre and the hundreds who watched online - heard about a wide variety of studies as well as an impassioned call to action from Nick Herbert MP, who is a key player in preparations for September's UN high-level meeting on TB. Another treat was the launch of Public Health England's LTBI public awareness film.
We were also delighted to link up with our friends at UCSF for our very first "super-symposium". UCSF streamed our final session in their auditorium before we handed over to them and streamed their talks from while our delegates enjoyed a post-symposium drink. For more about the UCSF event, visit their website.
We are still accepting your papers for a special collection that we've been putting together with F1000 Research, so please don't hesitate to send those in. And if you have any feedback on the 2018 symposium and thoughts for 2019's event, please contact us at tb@ucl.ac.uk.
Recordings of the talks are now available here:
- Welcome
- Global TB Advocacy in 2018
- Session 1: Drug resistant TB – what is it, where is it and how is it spread?
- Session 2: What should we do about drug-resistant TB?
- Public Health England: raising public awareness of LTBI
- Session 3: Debate – Do we need host-directed therapies if we have a universal drug regimen?
- Session 4: Novel approaches to identify new therapies
- Summary and thanks, and link to UCSF
Full programme
9.00-9.35am | Registration and coffee |
9.35-9.50am | Welcome address Prof David Moore (LSHTM) and Prof Michael Arthur (UCL) |
9.50-10.00am | Global TB Advocacy in 2018 Nick Herbert MP (APPG on Global TB, and Global TB Caucus) |
10.00-11.00am | Session 1: Drug resistant TB - what is it, where is it and how is it spread? Prof Tim McHugh (UCL, chair) Prof Francois Balloux (UCL) Global transmission of drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis L4 strains Dr Marc Lipman (UCL) Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and antibiotic resistance Dr Helen Stagg (UCL) Isoniazid monoresistant tuberculosis: Bad Medicine? Prof Alison Grant (LSHTM) Transmission of drug-resistant TB |
11.00-11.30am | Coffee and networking break |
11.30am-12.30pm | Session 2: What should we do about drug-resistant TB? Prof Katherine Fielding (LSHTM, chair) Dr Ilaria Motta (MSF) TB-Practecal trial updates Dr Karina Kielmann (Queen Margaret University) Putting systems in place to address drug-resistant TB: the role of 'hardware' and 'software' Dr Frank Kloprogge (UCL) Pharmacodynamic drug-drug interactions in antibiotic treatment combinations Prof Andrew Nunn (UCL) STREAM preliminary results: what do they tell us? |
12.30-1.30pm | Lunch break |
1.30-1.45pm | Public Health England: raising public awareness of LTBI Dr Dominik Zenner (PHE), Dr Matthew Burman (QMUL), Lee Ellis, Mark Nunn (In Tune for Life) |
1.45-3.00pm | Session 3: Debate - Do we need host-directed therapies if we have a universal drug regimen? Dr Helen Fletcher (LSHTM, chair) Dr Daniel Kalman (University of Emory Medical School) Dr Derek Sloan (University of St Andrews) |
3.00-3.30pm | Coffee and networking break |
3.30-4.30pm | Session 4: Novel approaches to identify new therapies Dr Teresa Cortes (LSHTM, chair) Dr Gillian Tomlinson (UCL) Calibrating a balanced immune response in tuberculosis Dr Luiz Pedro Carvalho (Francis Crick Institute) How to make "resistance-proof" antibiotics? Prof Helen McShane (Oxford University) Progress and challenges in TB vaccine development Prof Paul Elkington (University of Southampton) Investigation of TB in a bioengineered human granuloma model |
4.30-4.45pm | Summary, thanks and handover to UCSF |