Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s leading cause of infectious disease death. The quest to end this pandemic is challenged in part by an incomplete understanding of the immune responses necessary for protection against disease. Key to this issue is the heterogeneity that exists across many aspects of the disease, from mycobacterial physiology, to cellular responses to Mtb infection, to human responses to infection and vaccination.

The goal of this meeting is to bring together scientists from across the globe to deconstruct the monolith of TB, by dissecting pathogen and host heterogeneity across molecular and clinical aspects of disease. We will examine Mtb diversity alongside cellular heterogeneity that governs immune cell responses to the pathogen.  In addition, the program will cover heterogeneity in tissue-level response to infection, as well as human and non-human primate responses to vaccination,. A key focus of our meeting will be to highlight molecular, clinical, and technological advances that enable better characterization and definition of the variable elements that have the strongest impact on disease outcomes. We expect this meeting to identify emerging host and bacterial biomarkers of disease progression that characterize cohorts of individuals with TB for targeted approaches to treatment that will be more effective against this heterogenous disease. By bringing together diverse scientists from across the spectrum of TB research, this meeting will foster new collaborations to integrate human observations with  experimental models,  immunologic insights and molecular profiling, to generate new therapeutic paradigms that are so desperately needed against this disease.

Meeting Co-Organizer and Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. JoAnne Flynn, PhD, talks about why you should attend this meeting in the video below:

And check out the speaker highlights in the video below: