Tuberculosis expert to head US charity’s African lab
William Bishai, a tuberculosis specialist, was today named as the director of the first Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) research laboratory outside the United States. HHMI will invest US$70 million over ten years in the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH) being built in Durban, South Africa. Bishai will take up the post in September.
As part of a partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, the research institute will study HIV and tuberculosis, and the interaction between the two diseases. Tuberculosis is a major cause of death for people living with HIV and AIDS. Construction of the building is scheduled to start in September, and it is due to open in 2012. The institute is expected to house 110 staff, including nearly 50 researchers.
Bishai, a US citizen who expects to move to Durban in 2011, is at present the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research in Baltimore, Maryland. Here he speaks to Nature about his plans for K-RITH.
What are the advantages of an institute like this being located in South Africa rather than in the United States or Europe?
The rates of tuberculosis are falling in North America and Europe. Here in Baltimore we’ve reached incredibly low rates - well under 50 cases a year. But worldwide, it is setting all-time record highs. K-RITH is a tremendous opportunity to conduct research in a place where the disease under study is abundant.HHMI chose South Africa because it has a high burden of HIV and tuberculosis. The existing educational and research systems in South Africa will also allow the science to be built from the ground up. That’s really different from where you just do the translational research in the high-disease-burden setting but locate the basic science elsewhere. KwaZulu-Natal was also the epicentre an outbreak of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) that was reported in The Lancet1 in 2006. The outbreak in Tugela Ferry, about three hours’ drive north of Durban, was a real killer. That observation was, I think, a strong stimulus to locate K-RITH there.
Why do you think you were chosen for this job?
The pathogenesis of tuberculosis has been a career-long focus of mine. I have also participated in translational research, particularly in antibiotic regimen development. Furthermore, I still see patients at a clinic in the Johns Hopkins infectious-diseases division. Perhaps those skills were what the committee were looking for.
What research will K-RITH do?The tuberculosis field is drastically lagging behind the HIV field in terms of standard tools such as diagnostics and ‘biomarkers’ [biological molecules, usually proteins, used to track the progress of diseases] needed to implement better therapies. Because biomarkers are required to determine whether new drugs are working, the lack of these basic tools is making clinical trials for tuberculosis drugs and vaccines enormously expensive. Improving this ‘toolbox’ is a tremendous mandate for K-RITH.
We also need better drugs, and wouldn’t it be great if we could prevent tuberculosis with a vaccine? The same goes for HIV. Clinical HIV research is going very well in KwaZulu-Natal, and some seminal papers on HIV plus tuberculosis have come from those cohorts. We’re eager to expand those clinical cohorts to individuals that are suffering from tuberculosis only. That would enable us to become a site for tuberculosis vaccine trials. K-RITH is meant to build local African research capacity - how? The long-term goals are that K-RITH will eventually change to South African leadership, and that the institute will be self-sustaining and locally led. To get there we need to build capacity. We will set up graduate and fellowship training programmes. We will prepare career tracks for rising researchers.
Many senior researchers have agreed to come to KwaZulu-Natal to talk to the scientists and craft innovative research projects that recruit the participation of local students. We’re eager to continue that kind of international cross-fertilization.
Only a few years ago, the country had a president who doubted that HIV caused AIDS, and a health minister who promoted beetroot and other vegetables as treatment options. Has the current South African government’s more open stance on HIV made it easier to conduct HIV and tuberculosis research?
We’re incredibly excited about the positive turn of events in the government of South Africa. I think that signals that it is eager to tackle the problems.
In five years’ time, what will the institute have accomplished?
I think our success at the five-year mark will be a completed K-RITH building populated by world-class scientists who have strong links to the clinical resources in KwaZulu-Natal. If those three things can be accomplished, I am confident that there will be improved diagnostics and biomarkers. But the real goal is to establish a long-term structure that will connect basic science to the clinical problems that are abundant in South Africa.
Via (Nature News)
Posted 1 year, 11 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 23 hours, 16 minutes ago
