'It's great to see HRB funding of early-career stage doctors reap such a global impact', says Graham Love Chief Executive of the Health Research Board. 'This is one of the leading journals in the world in this research field and it shows what we can achieve if we continue to support Irish health researchers'.  

The lead author Dr Cliona Ni Cheallaigh was funded through a joint HRB-HSE scheme, that was specifically designed to support outstanding medical graduates and help them to develop their academic research careers.

Along with colleagues Professor Joe Keane, St James’s Hospital, and Professor Ed Lavelle, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, they focused in on a protein call Mal, which was of interest because about 25% of people have a different form of Mal. People with this difference tended to be more susceptible to getting sick with TB but up to now it was not sure why.  

What this research shows for the first time is that Mal is involved in signalling to Interferon Gamma, a master chemical in our immune response to illness. Interferon Gamma is like putting a fire-lighter on a fire – it sets off a big immune response when you have an infection.  

Dr Ni Cheallaigh commented on the findings,

'Having this different form of Mal affects how intensely you respond to Interferon Gamma – if you’ve one form you have a big response, if you have another form you have a dampened down response. We’ve discovered a whole new function for this protein Mal'.

Globally TB currently ranks alongside HIV as the leading cause of death worldwide, killing 1.5 million in 2014. This discovery also has implications in the treatment of other illnesses where Interferon Gamma is involved, these include other infectious diseases and cancer.

The paper has just been published in the journal Immunity. www.cell.com/immunity/abstract/S1074-7613(16)30006-1 

More information is available from the press release on the Trinity College Website at www.tcd.ie/news_events/

You can watch a three minute video explaining the discovery at www.youtube.com/watch