World TB Day Symposium: Countdown to 2015

Speakers

Organizers

Takushi Kaneko, PhD

TB Alliance

Dr. Takushi Kaneko is Senior Research Fellow at TB Alliance (Global Alliance for TB Drug Development), a New York based not-for profit organization dedicated to the discovery and development of better, faster-acting, and affordable tuberculosis drugs. After obtaining a degree at the University of Michigan and conducting post-doctoral work at Harvard University, he spent most of his time in drug discovery research in Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer in the areas of cancer chemotherapy, natural product discovery, and antibacterial agents.

Jennifer A. Philips, MD, PhD

NYU Langone Medical Center

Jennifer A. Philips received her medical and graduate training at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed clinical training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. She worked as a Translational Medicine Expert in the Infectious Disease Division at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research before starting her laboratory at the NYU School of Medicine. Her laboratory is interested in how Mycobacterium tuberculosis evades eradication by the host. She is a recipient of the Astellas Young Investigator Award from the Infectious Disease Society of America, the Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a grant from the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation.

Kyu Rhee, MD, PhD

Weill Cornell Medical College

Kyu Rhee is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology, and director of the Medical Research Track Residency Program at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Rhee's interests focus on the intrabacterial biochemistry of M. tuberculosis and its application to the study of its pathogenicity and development of new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities.

Jessica C. Seeliger, PhD

Stony Brook University

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

David Alland, MD

Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

Dr. Alland received a BA in Psychology from Columbia College at Columbia University and an MD from The Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. He completed a Residency in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital (now The New York-Presbyterian Hospital) and then spent a year in London studying Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he received an MSc. in Clinical Tropical Medicine and a DTM&H. Dr. Alland performed a clinical fellowship in Infectious Disease at Montefiore Medical Center and then a research fellowship in the laboratory of Barry Bloom at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He stayed on at Albert Einstein/Montefiore as faculty and then moved to New Jersey Medical School – UMDNJ where he soon became Professor and Chief of the Division of Infectious Disease. He is currently also the Director of the Center for Emerging Pathogens and the Associate Dean for Clinical Research at New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Alland’s laboratory studies various aspects of drug tolerance and drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis with an emphasis on drug resistance evolution, resistance and tolerance mechanisms, and molecular diagnostics. His laboratory also studies tuberculosis phylogenetics and pathogenesis and has an active program in bacterial sepsis diagnostics. Dr. Alland developed the Xpert MTB/RIF assay, the first commercial assay that can detect the presence of M. tuberculosis and resistance to the drug rifampin directly from a clinical sputum sample in collaboration with Cepheid. His laboratory continues to work on M. tuberculosis molecular diagnostics including advanced applications of the Xpert assay. Dr. Alland has received numerous NIH grant awards and he currently serves as a member of the NIH CRFS study section and the ACTG Tuberculosis Transformational Science Committee.

Stephanie Boisson-Dupuis, PhD

The Rockefeller University

Dr. Stephanie Boisson-Dupuis received her PhD in 2002 from University Paris VII in France, where she studied the genetic susceptibility to mycobacterial diseases in the laboratory of Pr. Jean-Laurent Casanova. She discovered the first human STAT mutant, with dominant STAT1 mutations associated only with mycobacterial disease. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Pr. Pascale Cossart at the Pasteur Institute in France until 2006. She was granted a permanent research position at the INSERM institute in 2006 to continue working with Pr. Jean-Laurent Casanova and Laurent Abel on the genetic susceptibility to mycobacterial diseases (tuberculosis in particular). In 2008, she was appointed Senior Research Associate in the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases at the Rockefeller University and continues to work on the genetic dissection of severe tuberculosis. Her areas of expertise include Mendelian genetics, molecular genetics and Infectious diseases.

Natalie Bruiners, PhD

New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers University

Natalie Bruiners attended the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where she received her BSc in Functional Human Biology in 2004. She obtained her Honours and Masters Degree at the Department of Human Genetics in 2007, investigating the potential genetic associations with preterm labour and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. She earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2013, investigating the role of ESX-1 secretion substrates in host-pathogen interactions and performing a case-control study to investigate specific genetic polymorphisms in a cohort of tuberculosis patients. Currently, she is continuing her research understanding the interaction between the tubercle bacilli and the macrophage at Public Health Research Institute, Rutgers University.

Andrea M. Cooper, PhD

Trudeau Institute

Dr. Cooper began her scientific career at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she described the interaction between macrophages and protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania. Moving to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, she expanded her investigation of leishmaniasis and leishmanial antigens to include the T-cell-mediated response of patients suffering from cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral forms of this disease. Dr. Cooper then moved to the Mycobacterial Research Labs at Colorado State University and began studying the protective immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. She has been at the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake since 2002 and has continued to study the interaction between the vertebrate immune system and the chronically persistent macrophage recruiting Mycobacterium tuberculosis. She focuses on the function of antigen-specific T cells within the infected site and how the infected site regulates this function

Jerrold J. Ellner, MD

Boston Medical Center

Dr. Ellner is Professor and Chief of Infectious Diseases at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center. He has studied the immunopathogenesis of TB and TB in HIV through research collaborations in Uganda and Brazil. Dr. Ellner has conducted clinical trials of the prevention of treatment of TB as well as the first HIV/AIDS Vaccine Trial in Africa. His research group was the first to show that TB accelerated the course of HIV infection by activating viral replication in latently infected cells. He was one of the principal architects of the Uganda-Case Western Reserve University Research Collaboration, a founding member of the Academic Alliance for AIDS Prevention and Care in Africa which developed the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University, and the founding director of the TB Research Unit at Case Western Reserve University. He currently is PI of an International Collaboration for Infectious Diseases Research (ICIDR) program in Brazil and the TB - Clinical Diagnostics Research Consortium (CDRC). Dr. Ellner has authored more than 250 publications on TB and has trained a number of current academic leaders in infectious diseases.

Daniel E. Everitt, MD

TB Alliance

Dr. Everitt serves as Senior Medical Officer at the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance). The TB Alliance is a non-profit Product Development Partnership that develops new treatments for tuberculosis through partnership with government and private funding sources, academic experts and pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining the TB Alliance, Dr. Everitt spent 10 years in Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical sector. There, he served in various roles, including as Vice President and Global Head of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Medicine at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, and as Vice President of Safety Governance. Before working at Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Everitt spent 10 years in clinical research and development at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals. For six years, he was an Investigator in the Clinical Pharmacology Research Unit based at the University of Pennsylvania, and subsequently led Phase 2-4 development projects based in Harlow, United Kingdom, in the areas of neurosciences and anti-infectives.

Dr. Everitt gained his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. After an Internal Medicine residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he was a Fellow at Harvard in Geriatric Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology. Dr. Everitt is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Geriatric Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. He served on the faculty of departments of medicine at Harvard Medical School and at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2011, Dr. Everitt completed training and received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Just prior to joining the TB Alliance, Dr. Everitt spent several months as a volunteer physician working in mission hospitals in Kenya. He is an author or co-author of 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals in the fields of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology.

Michael S. Glickman, MD

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Michael S. Glickman is a Member in the Immunology Program and Attending Physician on the Infectious Diseases Service, both at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is also Professor of Medicine, Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis, and Molecular Biology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is the incumbent of the Alfred Sloan Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Glickman’s interests include signal transduction across the M. tuberculosis cell envelope, DNA repair, and the biosynthesis and pathogenic function of the M. tuberculosis cell envelope.

Todd Gray, PhD

Wadsworth Center

Todd Gray is a research scientist at the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center, and he is a faculty member for the University of Albany School of Public Health as well as for the Wadsworth’s Masters in Laboratory Sciences Program.  He develops functional genomic approaches to mycobacterial biology through the use of the experimentally tractable Mycobacterium smegmatis. Dr. Gray earned his doctorate in developmental gene regulation with Francis Collins at the University of Michigan and further broadened his expertise to include epigenetics and poxvirology before addressing the challenges of mycobacteriology. Dr. Gray’s research is focused on assigning functions to the many conserved unannotated genes that comprise mycobacterial genomes, and on defining horizontal gene transfer events that have shaped those genomes.

Kathleen A. McDonough, PhD

Wadsworth Center

Dr. McDonough is Deputy Director of Division of Infectious Diseases at the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health and Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the University at Albany School of Public Health. Dr. McDonough is also Director of the Biodefense and Emerging Infections Training Program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at UAlbany and Wadsworth Center. Her research on the molecular pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis focuses on the bacterium's gene regulatory responses to host-associated environments and the factors that control these responses. Dr. McDonough obtained her doctorate in Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford University School of Medicine, followed by training on tuberculosis pathogenesis as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. McDonough's research program at Wadsworth Center is supported by National Institutes of Health, and she has been recognized on several occasions for her 'exceptional contributions to the NYS Department of Health'.

Steven A. Porcelli, MD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Dr. Steven Porcelli received an M.D. degree in 1984 from Yale University, and completed a medical residency at Temple University Hospital in 1987. He was fellow and then junior faculty member in the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. As a research fellow and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School in the 1990’s, he pioneered studies on the CD1 antigen presentation pathway and lipid antigen recognition by T cells. These studies led him into the area of tuberculosis research, with a major emphasis on antigen presentation and T cell responses in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. In 2000, he was recruited as Irene Diamond Associate Professor in Immunology to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and was subsequently appointed as Murray and Evelyne Weinstock Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He is also Scientific Director of the Flow Cytometry Core Laboratories at Einstein. His laboratory has focused for the past decade on uncovering the immune evasion mechanisms of M. tuberculosis with the goal of rationally designing improved vaccines. Together with colleagues at Einstein, he has identified genes of M. tuberculosis that contribute to evasion of cell-mediated immunity, and is working to create new attenuated strains of mycobacteria that more effectively induce protective immunity against tuberculosis than the existing BCG vaccine.

Kyu Rhee, MD, PhD

Weill Cornell Medical College

Kyu Rhee is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology, and director of the Medical Research Track Residency Program at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Rhee's interests focus on the intrabacterial biochemistry of M. tuberculosis and its application to the study of its pathogenicity and development of new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities.

G. Marcela Rodriguez, PhD

Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

I conducted undergraduate Studies in Bacteriology and Immunology in Bogota, Colombia in the “Universidad Javeriana”. I came to the USA to conduct my graduate studies. I worked for two years in the laboratory of Stephanie Diment as a research assistant working in antigen processing and presentation in the context of class II MHC molecules (and studying very hard to pass the GRE exam) and enter the graduate program at NYU. In 1999, I received a Ph.D in Microbiology from NYU. I did my thesis project studying iron regulation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in the laboratory of Dr. Issar Smith at the Public Health Research Institute. I stayed with Dr. Smith for a long post doc and continue my work on iron metabolism in Mtb. In 2007, I became Assistant professor at PHRI, at that time part of UMDNJ now, part of Rutgers the State University of New Jersey.

Erik Sakowski

NYU School of Medicine

Erik Sakowski graduated from Rutgers University with a B.S in Biotechnology in 2009. He is currently a microbiology graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Jennifer Philips at NYU School of Medicine studying how Mycobacterium tuberculosis is recognized by the host.

Padmini Salgame, PhD

Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

Dr. Padmini Salgame, PhD is tenured Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and the Centre for Emerging Pathogens at Rutgers, New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Salgame is Director of the MD/PhD program and she also directs the MD with thesis and the Physician-Scientist Skills Programs. The research in the Salgame laboratory includes: i) Regulation of innate and adaptive immune response to M. tuberculosis by Toll-like receptors; ii) Impact of Helminths on immunity and host resistance to TB; iii) Identifying Biomarkers of protection and progression to TB disease. Dr. Salgame has served on several NIH peer-review study sections. She is a member of the Editorial Board for Infection and Immunity and Guest Editor for PLOS Pathogens.

Marie Samanovic, PhD

NYU Langone Medical Center

Dr. Marie Samanovic is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the NYU School of Medicine, in the laboratory of Dr. Heran Darwin, preparing for a career as an independent investigator. She graduated with a PhD in Parasitology in 2009 from the laboratory of Dr. Jayne Raper. Since then she has studied Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), starting with a one year post-doc working on Mtb drug discovery at the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases in Singapore. She joined Dr. Darwin’s laboratory in December 2010. The Darwin laboratory discovered the first ubiquitin-like modifier pathway in prokaryotes, the function of which is essential for both proteasomal degradation and pathogenesis of Mtb. Dr. Samanovic has focused her post-doctoral research on understanding the link between proteasome function and Mtb pathogenesis.

Jessica C. Seeliger, PhD

Stony Brook University

Dr. Jessica Seeliger is Assistant Professor of Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University. Her research group investigates mechanisms of outer membrane biosynthesis and assembly in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Other research areas include the development and application of tools for gene attenuation and inducible gene regulation in mycobacteria.

Smita Srivastava, PhD

NYU School of Medicine

Dr. Smita Srivastava is an Associate Research Scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Joel Ernst at the NYU School of Medicine. She did her PhD at National Institute of Immunology, India, where she identified some of the factors that contribute towards long-lived antigen specific T cell memory. Before joining Dr. Ernst’s lab at NYU, she spent some time in the laboratory of Dr. Jacek Skowronski at CSHL where her work helped identify SAMHD1, a restriction factor that defends host macrophages from HIV1 infection. The Ernst Lab has published seminal papers that have provided new insights towards understanding immune responses during M. tuberculosis infection. Dr. Srivastava’s current project involves studying the underlying mechanisms that contribute to initiation of M. tuberculosis specific adaptive immunity as well as understanding how M. tuberculosis evades immune effector mechanisms.