Health Research Board Clinician Scientist, Professor Joe Keane takes up the story.

'This is a game-changer when it comes to new approaches to fighting TB. Instead of using antibiotics, which we have pretty much run out of, this discovery opens the door to use a new immunotherapy approach to improve existing treatments. And because this is not an antibiotic approach, TB cannot go on to develop resistance to this form of attack'.

'Don't you just love it when a plan comes together', says Graham Love, Chief Executive at the Health Research Board. 'In the space of a few days we have two major discoveries by HRB-funded researchers that could completely change the way that we treat TB. Aside from the scientific and medical significance, this illustrates beautifully how the different parts of the HRB's research programmes work together'.

Dr Gleeson is funded through a HRB Health Professional Fellowship, a scheme which allows talented, early-career health and social care professionals to undertake advanced training leading to a research doctorate. She was in turn supervised by Professor Joe Keane, a HRB Clinician Scientist Award (CSA) holder. The CSA scheme is targeted at senior health practitioners and allows them to dedicate up to 50% of their time to research with the award paying for replacement clinical staff so that there is no overall loss in clinical care service levels. The award enables holders to conduct their research and mentor the next generation of research talent. The physical space for the research was provided by the Clinical Research Facility at St James’s which is one of three such major facilities that the HRB have financed in recent years.

More details are available from the HRB press release on the subject and at the first link below. 

You can read about about the other TB discovery that Prof Keane was involved in on here on the HRB website and at the second link below.

The research paper was published this week in the Journal of Immunology and can be viewed at this link

jimmunol.org/content/early/2016/02/11/jimmunol.1501612.abstract