Active Infection & Immunity Public Health & Healthcare

Advancing epidemiological methods for surveillance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection: new approaches to direct case finding, prevention, and measure vaccine effectiveness

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Associated organisations Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme · University College London · University of Glasgow · Zambart Europe PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding £3.0M
Period Sept 2024 — Sept 2028

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Tuberculosis remains the world’s leading infectious killer, and new vaccines and drugs are being tested in Africa—but researchers lack the tools to measure whether these interventions actually stop the bacterium from spreading through communities. In Malawi, South Africa, and Zambia—countries slated for future TB vaccine roll-out—the team will develop a faster way to track recent TB transmission. Instead of costly, large-scale household surveys, they will test whether blood samples taken from children already visiting clinics for routine care can reliably reveal how much TB is circulating. They will then build computer simulations to see if this “convenience sampling” approach can measure a vaccine’s real-world effect on transmission during a national roll-out. If the method works, it could transform how countries evaluate TB vaccines, screening programmes, and preventive treatments. Rather than waiting years for results from traditional trials, public health officials could get rapid, population-level data on whether an intervention is curbing transmission. The project also trains a new generation of African epidemiologists to lead this work. The same approach could eventually be adapted for other infectious diseases where tracking recent transmission is difficult.

View original technical description
Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading global infectious killer. New TB vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics are now being evaluated in high-burden countries, but methodological advancement of epidemiological methods to understand their impact on recent transmission is urgently needed to capitalise on this investment. In three countries in Africa (Malawi, South Africa, Zambia) that are priority sites for future TB vaccine roll-out, we will discover and validate new epidemiological methods based on clinic convenience serosampling of children for measurement of recent TB transmission. We will use our new epidemiological framework to parameterise Monte Carlo simulation studies to investigate the potential for this clinic-based convenience sampling methodology to be used to rapidly and efficiently measure population-level vaccine effectiveness on recent transmission during scale up. We will support the development of a dynamic cadre of public health scientists and epidemiologists equipped to be leaders in the fight against TB. If the bold aims of this project are successful, we anticipate that the impact on TB could be transformative for efforts to end TB, and for other infections. Our methods will guide better-targeted screening and prevention interventions and discover new methods to evaluate the population impact of new TB vaccines, screening, and preventive interventions.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

James Chirombo (EPMC Awardee)Kwame Shanaube (EPMC Awardee)Molebogeng Rangaka (EPMC Awardee)Peter MacPherson (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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Original classification

Discovery Award

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