Dr Brian D Robertson
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is one of mankind’s most successful pathogens: around 8 million people develop tuberculosis every year, resulting in 2 million deaths. Most people mount an immune response that is sufficient to control initial infection but they remain susceptible to reinfection or reactivation disease in later life. Immunological evidence suggests that up to two billion people worldwide may harbour latent tuberculosis, with a ten percent lifetime risk of developing active disease. In 2006 the Stop TB Partnership set out a Global Plan to Stop TB, with the aim of cutting prevalence and mortality in half by 2015, as a step towards elimination of TB as a public health problem by 2050. Development of improved drugs, diagnostics and vaccines is central to the Global Plan.
The aim of our research is to understand the host-pathogen interactions underlying the complex biology of tuberculosis infection, and to exploit this understanding for development of improved tools for disease control. Our research is driven by genome-based biology, taking advantage of the availability of mycobacterial sequence data, techniques for mutagenesis and expression profiling, and the natural diversity of clinical isolates. Analysis and integration of large amounts of data on host and pathogen responses to infection is increasingly dependent on the emerging discipline of Systems Biology. Brian Robertson was a founder member and Deputy Director of the BBSRC/EPSRC-funded Centre for Integrative Systems Biology at Imperial College, and is now the Deputy Director of the Centre for Integrative Systems Biology and Bioinformatics (CISBIO). He is Co Editor-in-Chief of the journal Tuberculosis.
