A $5.8 million grant led by Adrie Steyn, Ph.D.
, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Africa Health Research Institute, or AHRI, in Durban, South Africa, will provide user-requested infected human lung tissue and analytical services to tuberculosis researchers worldwide. Tuberculosis, or TB, is a bacterial infection that causes 1.3 million deaths and 10.
6 million new active cases each year, yet experimental animal models of TB do not reproduce the full spectrum of disease as it occurs in humans. A paucity of human lung tissue for study has left a fundamental gap in understanding how the bacterial pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or Mtb, causes disease in people, says Steyn, a professor in the UAB Department of Microbiology. TB disease has existed since antiquity.
Mtb was identified as the pathogen more than 140 years ago, and in 1800s Europe, TB caused nearly one in every four deaths. Human lung samples were highly studied until the disease was greatly diminished by better sanitation, and then the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s and '50s. Since then, researchers have relied mainly on animal models to study TB.
Today, with the emergence of antibiotic-resistant Mtb, "there are few studies focused on elucidating in humans the fundamental mechanisms of active, subclinical and latent TB," Steyn said. "We believe the TB field can no longer rely on animal models that yield findings of limited clinical relevance. Thus, there is an urgent need to better understand .