Vanderbilt TB Center News

TB Center welcomes 1st Cohort of RePORT-Brazil Advanced Career Training (ReACT) Fellows

The Regional Prospective Observational Research in Tuberculosis - Brazil (RePORT-Brazil) network is pleased to announce its 1st Cohort of Fellows for the RePORT-Brazil Advanced Career Training (ReACT) program. Strategic Aim 3 of the recently renewed RePORT-Brazil Phase 2 grant (NIH U01AI172064-01), focuses on the development of a fellowship program for the advancement of early-career Brazilian scientists. The program provides funding for pilot projects in TB research, mentorship, and access to data and specimens collected throughout Phase 1 of the project.

Aurum Leadership Visit VUMC

Prof. Gavin Churchyard, CEO; Mr. Arshad Hassim, CFO; and Dr. Violet Chihota, Chief Specialist Scientist of the Aurum Institute, visited VUMC from August 21st to August 25th. Their visit strengthens the ongoing collaborative partnership between the two institutions, which is focused on research and global health. Included in the visit were a variety of strategic planning meetings, programmatic evaluations, and a presentation at ID Grand Rounds by Dr. Violet Chihota.

Dr. María Belen Arriaga Gutiérrez receives 2023 CAPES Thesis Award

Dr. María Belen Arriaga Gutiérrez, post-doctoral scholar at the Vanderbilt Tuberculosis Center, recently received commendations for her doctoral thesis "Clinical and Epidemiologic Determinants of Susceptibility to Infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the Therapeutic Responses in Patients with Tuberculosis” from the Brazilian Department of Education and CAPES, Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education.

VTC Hosts TB/HIV R01 Meeting

Vanderbilt Tuberculosis Center recently hosted a meeting of researchers involved in our TB/HIV grant "Predictors of treatment toxicity, failure, and relapse in HIV-related tuberculosis" (NIH R01AI120790-04). The event, which took place on April 26th and 27th, included presentations on the results and findings of each working group, breakout sessions, and discussions on future steps to be taken and larger goals of the research.

Successful Semi Annual Meeting of RePORT-Brazil

The Regional Prospective Observational Research for Tuberculosis (RePORT) - Brazil Semi Annual Meeting was held October 17th through October 21st in Salvador, Bahia. Investigators and staff from throughout the network participated in a variety of workshops, presentations, and collaborative planning sessions, both in-person and from remote locations. 

VUMC lands Grant to build top-line Biosafety Facility

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been awarded a nearly $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to construct a state-of-the-art BioSafety Level 3 (BSL3) facility for research involving the COVID-19 virus, anthrax and other dangerous microorganisms. When the renovation of about 3,500 square feet of existing space is completed, the facility will include three BSL3 suites with separate entrances and seven procedure rooms capable of securely containing multiple organisms at the second-highest biosafety level.

VUMC investigators attend RePORT-International Annual Meeting

VUMC investigators and staff, Timothy Sterling, Yuri van der Heijden, Stephany Duda, Marina Figueiredo, Fernanda Mauri, Megan Turner, and Austin Katona; attended the annual RePORT International meeting that was held in Cape Town, South Africa, September 7 and 8, 2022. The meeting included all seven regions of RePORT: Brazil, China, South Africa, South Korea, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It was a successful meeting full of presentations and collaborative discussions.

Leonardo Barreto's work in the Sterling Lab investigating MIC in Mtb isolates

Leonardo Barreto, Public Health Technologist at Instituto Nacional de Infectologia Evandro Chagas – FIOCRUZ, has spent the last 6 months in the Sterling Lab evaluating subtle changes in drug resistance (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration - MIC) in M. tuberculosis isolates from study participants from the NIH-funded project “Predictors of treatment toxicity, failure, and relapse in HIV-related tuberculosis” (R01AI120790).