Vanderbilt TB Center News

Congratulations to Graeme Meintjes at University of Cape Town on a newly funded D43 training grant from the Fogarty International Center (FIC) titled "HIV-Associated Tuberculosis Training Program (HATTP)". VUMC is excited to be a US partner site for this training grant, along with Johns Hopkins University.

Charles L. Daley, MD, Chief of the Division of Mycobacterial and Respiratory Infections at National Jewish Health in Denver, CO, presented Medicine Grand Rounds today. His talk was sponsored by the M. Glenn Koenig, Visiting Professorship in Infectious Diseases, hosted by the Division of Infectious Disease. During his talk, "Nontuberculous Mycobacteria: What's in a name?", he described the many species of mycobacteria and how they affect disease progression.

The Regional Prospective Observational Research for Tuberculosis (RePORT)- International Annual Meeting was held Tuesday, September 12 through Wednesday, September 13, 2017 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. RePORT-International is now composed of 5 regions: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.

Chris Fiske, MD, MPH and Spyros Kalams, MD, presented at ID Grand Rounds on Thursday, September 7th. Dr. Fiske presented her work on the host immune response to M.tuberculosis, including a focus on patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Dr. Kalams presented on the immunology of tuberculosis and an ongoing study funded by the NIH and CNPq in Brazil which is attempting to identify an immune signature that predicts active TB disease.

The Vanderbilt Tuberculosis Center turns 5 this year and a celebratory meeting was hosted on August 23rd, 2017. First we heard from Heather Ewing, MPH/MA candidate, who discussed updates from the TIPS (Trans-Institutional Programs) grant on social determinants of health in Brazil.

Congratulations to Fernanda Maruri, MPH, who was awarded the Vivien A. Thomas Award for Excellence in Clinical Research during the 13th annual Research Staff Awards!
 
 Fernanda is a clinical and translational research coordinator III in the Division of Infectious Diseases and has worked with Dr. Tim Sterling for over 10 years. Fernanda earned her master’s degree in public health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2004 she was hired by Timothy Sterling, M.D., to coordinate a clinical tuberculosis study.

The TB Center celebrated World TB Day 2017 at the Metro Nashville Public Health Department. They hosted an awareness event that was open to the public at the Lentz Public Health building. The event includes presentations on TB statistics, affected populations, patient perspectives, and general awareness activities.
 
 Thanks for the "stress lungs"!

Bruno Andrade, MD, PhD, visited VUMC November 9-10, 2016 to present ID Grand Rounds and meet with various faculty members about ongoing research projects. Dr. Andrade is a site-PI for the RePORT-Brazil network (Regional Prospective Observational Research in Tuberculosis), which is led by Dr. Tim Sterling at VUMC and Dr. Valeria Rolla at FIOCRUZ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Dr. Andrade is an Associate Researcher at Instituto Brasileiro para Investigacao da Tuberculose and a Professor of Pathology at Faculdade de Technologia e Ciencias, both in Salvador, Brazil.

A VTC meeting was held November 2, 2016, and presentations were given by Nastassja Kriel and Yuri van der Heijden, MD, MPH. Nastassja Kriel, PhD candidate, was visiting from Stellenbosh University in South Africa to attend a grant-sponsored meeting and to meet with various faculty members at VUMC. Nastassja presented on "Proteomic analysis of nucleoproteins in Mycobacterium smegmatis". Nastassja currently works in the lab of Rob Warren, PhD, who is a close collaborator of Dr.

David Sherman, Ph.D., from the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Seattle, WA, visited June 27-28, 2016 to meet with Vanderbilt faculty and present a PMI Special Seminar, “Mining TB gene regulation to improve therapy”.
 
 Drs. Sherman and Sterling are collaborating on projects related fluoroquinolone resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and had productive discussions related to a recent grant submission.

Christopher Whalen, M.D., from the University of Georgia, visited on June 20th, 2016 to meet with faculty from the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. Dr. Whalen is the new Director for the Center for Global Health at the University of Georgia. He also presented at VIGH Grand Rounds on "Transmission of M. tuberculosis in African Urban Settings: Kampala, Uganda".

Julian Peters, PhD, spent three weeks at the Vanderbilt TB Center in April 2016 to analyze data from her ongoing studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Julie works in the lab of Bavesh Kana at Wits in Johannesburg, South Africa. She presented at our April 27th TB Center Meeting on "Dynamics in differentially culturable tubercle bacilli (DCTB) decline during early treatment of tuberculosis".