Centre for Tuberculosis Research

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CTBR in the news

• Melissa Richard-Greenblatt, a Ph.D. student in Dr. Yossef Av-Gay`s lab, was awarded the Constance Livingstone-Friedman and Sydney Friedman Foundation Scholarship to travel to South Africa for 10 months to study the disease from a clinical perspective. She alsofundraised to provide books, magazines and games to TB patients at the Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry, South Africa.
• CTBR researcher Jennifer Gardy from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control was appointed to the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine's Forum on Microbial Threats, an advisory council in Washington, D.C.
• CTBR researcher Jennifer Gardy from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Greg Poland from the Mayo Clinic are the keynote speakers at the 2014 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA.. more.../
• CTBR researcher Israel Casabon has been invited to speak at the Keystone Symposium on Novel Therapeutic Approaches to Tuberculosis, Keystone, Colorado. Casabon's research unveils how the specific parts of the cholesterol molecule are broken down by various enzymes allowing the TB bacterium to feed on cholesterol. The step by step elucidation of the biochemical pathway used by TB has led Casabon to identify the enzymes which present the most potential as targets for the development of a novel drug.
• CTBR researcher Jennifer Gardy chaired the TB Genomics symposium at the 2013 Union World Conference in Paris.
• Flavia Sorrentino, a postdoctoral fellow working in the research group led by Prof. Yossef Av-Gay joined Tres Cantos Open lab to perform a high-throughput screening to identify new small molecules that could eradicate tuberculosis as part of a two year grant.more...
• Valérie Poirier was awarded the British Columbia Proteomics Network Travel Support to present her research results at the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO ) 12th Annual World Congress in Yokohama, Japan in September 2013, Japan.
• CTBR researchers Lindsay Eltis and William Mohn examined similarities in the function of enzymes involved in PCB degradation and enzymes involved in TB. They found out that TB survives by degrading cholesterol for fuel to survive. The discovery offers the potential for an entirely new class of therapeutics—answering a critical need for new treatments to combat emerging drug resistant strains. more...
• A well-established family of drugs used to treat parasitic diseases is showing surprising potential as a therapy for tuberculosis (TB), according to new research from University of British Columbia microbiologists. more...
• CTBR researchers Santiago Ramon-Garcia and Charles Thompson have found a synergistic combination of two known drugs (used for other therapeutic applications but never before to treat TB) capable of inhibiting Mtb growth, while neither of these drugs have any effect on their own against Mtb.more...
• Podcast by CTBR Researcher Dr. Av-Gay about his recently published paper. more...