Tuberculosis Research Program
Tuberculosis (TB) is the major cause of death from a bacterial pathogen in adults; in 2018 alone there were 1.5 million deaths from TB and 10 million new TB cases worldwide. In addition, it remains an important cause of childhood illness and mortality in high burden countries. In 2018, 1.1 million children fell ill with TB globally and 205,000 child deaths were due to TB, including among children with HIV (individuals who are infected with HIV are 19 times more likely to develop active TB due to their compromised immune system).
Of importance to Australia, TB is an enormous and rapidly growing problem in our region, which contains 58% of global TB cases and 56% of multi-drug resistant TB.
Our approach to tackling TB research is through a range of measures. Through developing new vaccines and drugs, improving our understanding of TB immunology, discovering new biomarkers and contributing to public policy and practice. As a part of the Centre of Research Excellence in Tuberculosis Control we have the platform to translate new discoveries into more effective tools to control TB.
As a result, our STOP-TB strategy calls for intensified research into more effective tools to control TB, including completely new approaches to TB vaccines, TB drugs and tools for the diagnosis of active TB and biomarkers to monitor the response to therapy.
Finding a cure
We are developing vaccines for delivery to the lung to boost immunity against TB. We are also developing subunit vaccines that contain proteins to stimulate protective immunity against different stages of the TB infection.
Around two million people have latent TB infection, with around 5% risk of developing active TB during their lifetime. As such, we are working to discover new biomarkers to distinguish those with active TB. We are also conducting a genome wide association study to identify genetic variants that contribute to increased susceptibility to TB.
The major threat to TB control is the emergence of drug resistant strains of the infection. For the past five years we have also been working towards the development of new drugs that are effective against these increasingly prevalent drug resistant strains.
As a result, our STOP-TB strategy calls for intensified research into more effective tools to control TB, including completely new approaches to TB vaccines, TB drugs and tools for the diagnosis of active TB and biomarkers to monitor the response to therapy.
Finding a cure
We are developing vaccines for delivery to the lung to boost immunity against TB. We are also developing subunit vaccines that contain proteins to stimulate protective immunity against different stages of the TB infection.
Around two million people have latent TB infection, with around 5% risk of developing active TB during their lifetime. As such, we are working to discover new biomarkers to distinguish those with active TB. We are also conducting a genome wide association study to identify genetic variants that contribute to increased susceptibility to TB.
The major threat to TB control is the emergence of drug resistant strains of the infection. For the past five years we have also been working towards the development of new drugs that are effective against these increasingly prevalent drug resistant strains.
