First annual meeting of the Stool4TB project team
In an attempt to narrow the large TB case detection gap in children and people living with HIV, the Stool4TB project will evaluate an innovative stool-based qPCR diagnostic platform in the high TB and HIV burden settings of Mozambique, Eswatini and Uganda. For the first time since COVID-19 the team was able to meet face to face, on 7-8 April in Johannesburg.
The first annual meeting of the Stool4TB project was held at the Garden Court hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa on the 7-8th April. It was delayed by approximately 6 months due to COVID-19.
The meeting was attended by 19 participants live, and 6 participants online, and all consortium partners were present: IS Global, Centro de Investigacao em Saude de Manhica, Makerere University, Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation Eswatini, Baylor College of Medicine, Research Center Borstel and Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development. For some of the sessions, additional external participants were invited, such as the principal investigators (PIs) of approved sub-studies or Stool4TB PhD students.
It was a very productive two-day meeting during which all aspects of the project were discussed. Alberto Garcia-Basteiro, coordinator of the Stool4TB project, said the meeting allowed for “having all the consortium members in the same room contributing to everyone's engagement with the project objectives.” They spent a full day discussing the progress of the diagnostic study of the novel stool-based PCR. The meeting was very excited to hear of recruitment being well underway in Uganda and Mozambique, as well as the study being very close to starting recruitment in Eswatini. Fruitful sessions were had on solving challenges surrounding study implementation and remaining data management issues and the management of the biorepository during and beyond the project duration. An update was given on the social science study embedded within the diagnostic study, which is expected to start early in year two of the study.
On the second day, there was an exciting and stimulating scientific session in which the PIs of all currently approved ancillary studies presented their projects. This led to a lot of discussion including the generation of additional research ideas. It was inspiring to see what scientific opportunities have been created with the set-up of the Stool4TB project and that many of these are able to be realised within the consortium and their network partners.
A highlight of the meeting was the presentations given by the three recently selected students who will be pursuing their PhD embedded within the Stool4TB project. George William Kasule, the PhD candidate from Uganda, presented on his proposal on ‘Non-sputum-based biomarkers for TB diagnosis among children and people living with HIV’, providing an important investigation into fecal volatile organic compound profiles in stool and aims to measure indoleamine 2-3 dioxygenase enzyme (IDO) in exhaled breath. The Mozambican candidate, Edson Tereso Mambuque, proposed a study on ‘Characterization of microbiome and its variation for TB diagnosis among children and HIV positive adults’ which will look at microbiota in both sputum and stool and will evaluate microbiota and immune signatures to understand their roles in TB pathogenesis. Busizwe Sibandze, the PhD candidate from Eswatini, will work on a project entitled ‘The evolution of multidrug-resistant strains harboring RPOB I491F mutation’ to describe changes in MDR strains harboring I491F mutation and look at potential impacts on long-term treatment with Bedaqueline and Clofazomine. It was exciting to see how innovative and rich their PhD projects can become thanks to the mix of the parent and ancillary studies. Noticeable was also that the projects are a combination of both South-South collaboration and North-South capacity building.
Finally, the meeting programme was complemented by two state-of-the-art online lectures which were open to the general public from different institutions in Southern Africa. Our consortium experts gave an excellent overview of the diagnosis of TB in people living with HIV (Thursday) and in children (Friday). These sessions were attended by more than 25 people each. In addition, two additional sessions that are part of the annual Stool4TB training programme took place in the following two weeks: one was an introductory session to Project Management and the other on pediatric chest X ray interpretation in collaboration with South African colleagues from Stellenbosch University. Although the meeting was productive on all fronts, Alberto Garcia-Basteiro said that it was also “a great opportunity to interact with partners face to face and have some time outside the formal meeting to update ourselves on all fronts of life!”