Annual Edinburgh Infectious Diseases Symposium

09.15:  Ross Fitzgerald (Director of Edinburgh Infectious Diseases) – Welcome and introduction

09.20:  Ker Lecture: Stewart Cole (President of the Institut Pasteur, Paris) – Accelerating tuberculosis drug development

10.15:  Aaron Trent Irving (Infection Medicine / Zhejiang University) – Bats as reservoirs of zoonotic coronaviruses

10.35:  Katie Atkins (Usher Institute) – Combining mathematical models and phylogenetics to understand SARS-CoV-2 and HIV

10.55:  Adam Hayward (Moredun Research Institute) – Quantifying the impact of liver fluke on performance in beef cattle

11.15:  ECR short talks x 4

1. Enock Mararo (Roslin Institute) – Comparative metabolomics of Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma congolense and their impact on macrophage function and host immune responses
2. Wiebke Nahrendorf (School of Biological Sciences) – Adaptive T cells regulate disease tolerance in human malaria
3. Sara Clohisey (Roslin Institute) – Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in COVID-19
4. Lois King (Usher Institute) – Addressing childhood pneumonia in a post-COVID world: power, political priorities and progress

11.45:  Ker Prize Winner:  Derick Nii Mensah Osakunor (School of Biological Sciences) – Paediatric Schistosomiasis: Dynamics and Consequences

12.00:  Christine Tait-Burkard (Roslin Institute) –  IFN alpha variants as a treatment and immune-stimulant against SARS-CoV-2 infection

12.20:  Maddie Moule (School of Biological Sciences) – Dissecting the host-pathogen interactions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis dissemination and extrapulmonary spread

12.40:  Dominic Moran (Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security) – Antimicrobial resistance: an economic primer

Ker Memorial Lecture 2021 - Stewart Cole

Ker Memorial Prize Winner 2021 - Derick Nii Mensah Osakunor

Lightening talks

Adam Hayward - Quantifying the impact of liver fluke on performance in beef cattle

Maddie Moule - Dissecting the host-pathogen interactions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis dissemination and extrapulmonary spread

Dominic Moran - Antimicrobial resistance: an economic primer

Christine Tait Burkard - IFN alpha variants as a treatment and immune-stimulant against SARS-CoV-2 infection

Aaron Trent Irving - Bats as reservoirs of zoonotic coronaviruses

Despite the advent of Covid-19, tuberculosis (TB) obdurately remains the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent having claimed over a billion human lives in the past two centuries.  There are many similarities between the two airborne diseases and much can be learned about controlling Covid-19 from TB. 

In the last two decades, intensive efforts have been made by the public and private sectors to discover and develop new diagnostics and therapeutic or prophylactic agents for TB.  A promising drug treatment pipeline is now in place and I will describe how this was achieved and how Covid-19 can benefit therefrom.

Stewart studied microbiology at the University of Wales in Cardiff prior to earning his PhD in molecular genetics from the University of Sheffield in 1979. Subsequently, he embarked on a career as a research scientist at the University of Umeå (Sweden) and the Max-Planck-Institut in Tübingen (Germany). 

In 1983 he joined the Institut Pasteur (Paris, France), where he rose to be the Scientific Director.  In 2007, he moved to the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne  where he led a world-class research unit dedicated to TB drug discovery, and served as the Director of the Global Health Institute. 

In 2018, Stewart rejoined the Institut Pasteur as its President.

Stewart Cole, Institut Pasteur

Stewart Cole ORCiD