Tuberculosis (TB) kills almost two million people a year, and a third of the world’s population have dormant TB infection. The tragedy of these statistics is that the causative agent of TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was one of the first bacterial pathogens to be identified, yet the tools we have developed to control TB in the intervening 100 years are clearly inadequate. The BCG vaccine against TB was developed in the early 20th century and is one of the most widely used vaccines in the world; however clinical trials have shown that the protection afforded by BCG against the transmissible, pulmonary form of TB is effectively zero. A new TB vaccine is therefore an urgent priority, but we need to learn lessons from the current BCG vaccine to help focus the development of this new vaccine.

Professor Gordon is seeking to exploit the completion of the genome sequences of the BCG vaccine strain, the human TB pathogen, M. tuberculosis, and the bovine TB pathogen, Mycobacterium bovis, to accelerate vaccine design and the development of diagnostics. Recent highlights of his research work include the annotation and interpretation of the M. bovis and BCG Pasteur genome sequences, and comparative virulence and evolutionary analyses across the M. tuberculosis complex. In his talk he will describe the history of the BCG vaccine, and how genomic technologies are revealing how the genetic make-up of the vaccine may impact on vaccine efficacy.

The Department of Microbiology seminars run every Thursday in W9 at 4pm. Contact Dr Cormac Gahan for details.

<<Previous Item Next Item>>

« Back to 2010 Press Releases