Capacity Building Presentations provide the opening of Day 2 at the TrENDxTB Annual Meeting

Ismaila Manneh, Thao Dang, Donald Simon, and Rashid Momodou

On 25-26 November 2023, TriageTB and ENDxTB members could finally come together again in person for their joint annual project meeting. Hosted by Stellenbosch University, the two-day meeting took place at the university’s Biomedical Research Institute.

As capacity-building is at the heart of the joint project, four young researchers from The Gambia, South Africa, and Vietnam opened the plenary session on the second day. Professors Hazel Dockrell of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Jayne Sutherland of the Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia (MRCG) at LSHTM chaired the session that was characterised by high-quality presentations approaching the topic of diagnosing and being able to treat tuberculosis (TB) from various angles, reflecting the different backgrounds of the scientists Ismaila Manneh, Donald Simon, Rashid Momodou, and Thao Dang.

Ismaila Manneh, a research degree student based at MRCG and registered with LSHTM, gave the first talk which looked at the identification of new protein-cytokine biomarkers that can be used for screening or diagnosis of TB and for monitoring the effects and outcome of anti-TB treatment. His analyses were based on serum collected from 85 patients with active pulmonary TB and 175 people with other respiratory infection during the project. His research confirmed three signatures with high accuracy for identifying TB patients with potential value for monitoring treatment. Findings from his study will contribute to the project’s goal of finding new and simpler ways of identifying patients with active tuberculosis. 

Next, adult pulmonologist Donald Simon, who currently works as a research clinician engaged in both observational and interventional clinical trials at Stellenbosch University’s Biomedical Research Institute, presented results from his PhD project "Validation of serum protein signatures and PET-CT biomarkers to predict tuberculosis treatment outcome." Titled “Describing the TB treatment response”, he highlighted the examination of differential protein expression across five timepoints during TB treatment and the use of a multi-marker biosignature to predict treatment outcomes.

Rashid Momodou of MRCG, who holds degree in Biology and has hands-on experience in the fields of Immunology and Molecular Biology, looked at “Multi-pathogen analysis of nasopharyngeal swabs from triage and exposed patients”.

He focused on how respiratory tract infections affect the performance of the Cepheid 3-gene TB screening test. One of his main goals was to determine if respiratory infections, particularly viral infections, would impact test result. He also showed the distribution of non-TB respiratory pathogens in the different study sites, which helped provide a final diagnosis for those participants who suffered from other respiratory diseases (i.e. not TB).

The final talk was given by Thao Dang Thi Thanh, a study doctor of ENDxTB from Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in HCMC, Vietnam. Her presentation focused on the etiology of cough for more than two weeks in Vietnamese adolescents and adults. Her work showed that vigorous testing for respiratory pathogen can diagnose 61.3% cases, while she also provided insights into their results for the performance of the 3-gene TB-score. In addition, she shared some key messages from the national TB community advisory board meeting, shedding light on the community perspective on blood-based screening test that showed higher acceptance of blood tests than of sputum tests.

After her presentation, Thao Dang commented that it was wonderful to be at the TrENDxTB annual meeting and to see each other in person for the first time, thus being able to exchange views more easily. Ismaila Manneh added that the meeting in Cape Town provided an opportunity for networking and productive interactions with both students and experts form collaborating sites and for receiving constructive feedback. Rashid Momodou was glad about the opportunity to intertwine his research with the project’s goal to field-validate a rapid point-of-care triage test for active tuberculosis, and Donald Simon remarked that, under the guidance of Prof Gerhard Walzl, their endeavours would not only contribute to advancing the understanding of TB treatment but also align with the overarching mission of precision medicine in the field.