Weekly round-up #66

With World TB Day highlighting this disease and its sufferers across the globe on 24 March 2019, our Director, Prof Helen McShane, spoke to the EU's Horizon Magazine about TB vaccine research and development. At the current rate of decrease it will be 191 years until TB is eliminated, which is not acceptable - we urgently need to accelerate TB vaccine development as a critical tool in this fight and VALIDATE is doing its part. Read about our funded work here.

Funding:

HIC-VAC pump-priming funding - our sister GCRF network supporting human challenge model research for vaccine development - closes 10 May 2019

Find other funding opportunities on our external funding page.

Training Opportunities:

Executive Programme for Global Health Leadership, LSHTM - Sep 2019 course start (apply now)
NC3Rs PhD Summer School, University of Bristol, UK - 26-28 June course

Visit our training opportunities page for further ideas for your career development.

Events

Nothing new, but don't forget to hold the date for the VALIDATE 3rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Conference on 1-3 October 2019, as well as our 2nd ECR workshop on the 30th Sept; further details coming soon.

Visit our events page for all the events coming up in our field.

Job Opportunities:

TB Vaccine Project Manager at University of Oxford, closes 22 April
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Vaccinology at the Royal Veterinary College, UK, closes 15 May 2019

To view all the vacancies in our field visit our job webpage.

Publications:

Designing tuberculosis vaccine efficacy trials - lessons from recent studies in Expert Review of Vaccines
Historical BCG vaccination combined with drug treatment enhances inhibition of mycobacterial growth ex vivo in human peripheral blood cells - in Scientific Reports, by VALIDATE members Andrea Zelmer, Lisa Stockdale, Steve Smith, Karin Seifert and Helen Fletcher and collaborators
Identification of reduced host transcriptomic signatures for tuberculosis and digital PCR-based validation and quantification out on BioRxiv, by VALIDATE members Hazel Dockrell and Rob Wilkinson and collaborators
Building a tuberculosis-free world: The Lancet commission on tuberculosis

Take a look at our publications page for papers of interest by our members and in the fields of our focus pathogens.

Highlights on Twitter this fornight: a RSTMH blog article by VALIDATE members Dr Rebecca Harris and Prof Richard White about the urgent need for new TB vaccines and how to accelerate their development; how VALIDATE member IDRI are using computer simulations to decrease the costs of clinical trials and speed new vaccines; what our members think about VALIDATE in our member opinions video; just 2 weeks left of free access to the Biochemistry and immunology interdisciplinary collection by the Biochemical Society and the British Society for Immunology; Prof Heidi Larson spoke to the BBC World Service about vaccine confidence, autism and the MMR vaccine; how saying yes to 'other things' can expand your career options post-Phd; how the MRC can help your transition from post-doc to independent researcher; Direk Limmathurotsakul discussed his work to improve the official reporting of melioidosis with the American Society for Microbiology; advice on how to write a publishable article; and the launch of HORN's free One Health eLearning materials on One Health concepts and research skills. All this and more @NetworkVALIDATE where you can easily keep up to date on news and opinions in our field.

Published: 27 March 2019