Thursday 26 May 2022, 6pm (IST)
Tickets are free and are available through the Eventbrite Booking System.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient disease that has killed more people than any other infectious disease. Despite more than 60 years of antibiotics, TB remains a major cause of sickness and death and was the second-largest infectious killer in 2020 after Covid-19. New drugs and an effective vaccine are desperately needed. To better understand the disease pathogenesis, we have developed the zebrafish as a model of TB. In early life, the zebrafish is transparent, and we have used this feature to examine how the TB bacterium evades and exploits host immune cells in real-time in live animals. Then, by manipulating zebrafish genes, we have uncovered the genetic and mechanistic bases of the disease. This has led us to a new understanding of host genetic susceptibilities and potentials for new anti-TB drugs that we are showing are relevant for humans too.
