Characterising Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the human lung

This project will use molecular profiling tools to characterise M.tb in lung tissue from TB patients undergoing surgery. Lung resection remains a treatment option for TB, this discard tissue is being collected in an ongoing TB clinical trial (SHL-TB) to understand the immunology of TB lung lesions. This timely and innovative NC3Rs studentship will characterise the phenotype of bacilli and identity novel M.tb vaccine candidates at the site of pathology, human lung lesions, where vaccines and drugs are targeted. An ex-vivo model using lung tissue from TB patients will be optimised to inform the replacement of animal models in TB drug discovery with a tissue culture model that better mimics the human lung environment and is amenable to the scale-up necessary to develop new multi-drug regimens for TB.