SA lands massive TB grant

South Africa has again confirmed its position at the forefront of tuberculosis research with a R33,2-million grant to study how humans protect themselves against TB.

The South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) of the University of Cape Town (UCT) yesterday (TUESDAY) announced the multi-million rand research grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.The study aims to gain critical new knowledge about how humans protect themselves against TB.

TB is an infectious lung disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. About half a million new cases of TB disease occur in South Africa every year. World wide, 1.4 million people die from TB each year. New vaccines to prevent people from getting the disease, better tools to identify those who have TB and new drugs to treat those who are sick are what is needed. Progress toward these interventions requires research to understand how the human body fights TB.

Dr Thomas Scriba, Deputy Director of Immunology at SATVI will lead the project, a collaborative effort between SATVI and researchers at five Institutions in the USA.
 "We are thrilled to be awarded this grant. We have assembled an outstanding team of people to address a very significant question using cutting-edge and the most modern scientific approaches."

The project aims to discover which components of the TB bacterium are targeted by the body's T cells, which are responsible for orchestrating the many different cells of the immune system to effectively fight against infections. This information about the human immune response will inform how to design better vaccines against TB in the future.

This project complements and builds on two others - led by Prof. Willem Hanekom, Director of SATVI - aimed at identifying ways to predict who may develop TB.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already contributed more than ZAR90 million ($10.7 million) toward funding of these projects. "This important study provides a unique and exciting opportunity to gain a better understanding of how we protect ourselves against TB," said Prof Hanekom.

Health-e