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Drug resistant TB studied to develop new drugs
Through the study of drug sensitive and drug resistant TB strains, scientists hope to identify markers for the design of rapid TB tests, develop new drugs  and to assist the TB program to control drug resistant TB.

When it comes to TB research, the CBTBR enjoys competitive advantage in many areas, mainly as a result of funding, expertise in the field and valuable resources – such as a unique bank of samples, collected over many years by Profs Tommie Victor and Rob Warren of the CBTBR SU node.

This bank represents one of the largest collections of TB samples in the world, including more than 13 000 drug sensitive and 6 000 drug resistant cultures which form a vital resource for studies that use DNA fingerprinting to track the evolution of drug resistant strains and how they spread through populations.

Working with these strains, the CBTBR team are trying to find out how tuberculosis strains mutate to become resistant to antibiotics. By whole genome sequencing and comparing the DNA of numerous strains, they identify gene variations that seem to correlate with drug resistance. So far the team, in collaboration with partners at the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States, have identified more than 40 mutations that can either confer or enhance drug resistance in TB bacteria. They hope to sequence thousands of TB bacteria to derive the most comprehensive view of drug resistance possible.

Recently, Prof. Victor received a grant amounting to R4 million over a period of three years from the Wellcome Trust to study drug resistant TB.
His team plan to use a range of state of art complementary strategies to identify molecular events which allow the bacterium to become hyper-resistant. These events may change the characteristics of the bacterium by altering metabolic processes which regulate the intracellular drug concentration. These events can be targeted (in combination with existing anti-TB drugs)  to restore the level of drug resistance, Prof. Victor says.

In photo (right to left): Prof Tommy Victor, Dr Gail Louw and Prof. Rob Warren.

CBTBR boasts a whopping 9 PhD graduates in 2009
The CBTBR has successfully produced 9 PhD graduates in the past year. These students with their “thesis titles” are as follows: Mohube Betty Mowa (Function and expression of class I ribonucleotide reductase small subunit-encoding genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium smegmatis), Suzanna Savvi (Identification and characterisation of the vitamin B12-dependent methylmalonyl coenzyme A pathway in Mycobacterium tuberculosis), Erika de Wit (Analysis of host determining factors in susceptibility to tuberculosis in the South African coloured population), Andre Loxton (The role of the regulatory T-cells during HIV/TB co-infection), Novel Chegou (An Evaluation of Novel Diagnostic Techniques in the Diagnosis of Latent and Active Tuberculosis), Nonhlanhla Nene (The effect of exposure to environmental mycobacteria on human immune responses against Mycobacterium tuberculosis), Gail Louw (Resistance to first-line anti-TB drugs by gene mutation and gene modulation), Colleen Wright (The contribution of fine needle aspiration biopsy in the diagnosis of mycobacterial lymphadenopathy with particular reference to children) and Madeleine Hanekom (The Molecular Epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: Host and Bacterial factors perpetuating the epidemic).

In Photo: Some of the CBTBR PhD graduates and their supervisors at the Awards Ceremony.

Stellenbosch University in the World Top 20 institutions and CBTBR co-director 4th highest ranked scientist in the World in the field of Tuberculosis
Recently, ScienceWatch listed Stellenbosch university in the top 20 institutions out of a pool of 9,186 institutions which attracted the highest total citations to their papers published on the topic tuberculosis (TB) in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals.In July 2009, Prof Paul van Helden was featured in an article on Thompson Reuters’ Sciencewatch, citing him as the 4th highest ranked scientist in the World in the field of tuberculosis.

CBTBR co-director receives prestigious ASSAf Science-for-Society Award
Prof Paul van Helden, from the co-director of the CBTBR, was amongst two scientists who recently received the Academy of Science of South Africa’s (ASSAf) Science-for-Society Gold Medal. ASSAF awards this prestigious award annually for scholarly excellence.

Prof van Helden was, until recently, Chair of the Research and Ethics committee of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Stellenbosch University (SU), the first person who is not a clinician and not a Dean to head this committee in its history. He is the executive head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at SU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, and head of the Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics. He is also the director of the MRC/SU Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology, and co-director of the CBTBR.

Van Helden has initiated major new directions in TB research, obtained funding, found local and international collaborators, coordinated and managed the projects – all in the interests of finding new tools to diagnose, treat and prevent one of the world’s most devastating diseases.

Under his leadership, the group has set out to understand the mechanisms of drug resistance; to challenge all the existing conceptual frameworks and to re-examine fundamentals; to introduce rapid diagnostics; and to assess whether drug-resistant TB cases are caused by acquisition of resistance or transmission of already resistant microorganisms.

Van Helden’s contribution towards the body of science is evidenced by his extensive list of publications, book chapters and patents. There are few South African scientists who have such an excellent record, particularly in so many high-impact journals.