Who is Involved

PreDiCT-TB brings together some of the best European scientists in the field of tuberculosis but also those with new ideas from other fields. As importantly, the consortium already comprises almost 100 people with diverse skills. Laboratory scientists, pharmacometricians, systems biologists, engineers, clinical trialists, computer scientists and project managers will work together to make this fresh approach a reality. From another standpoint, by fusing academic innovation with industry expertise and focus on drug development, we aim to find novel solutions to the problem of developing combination TB treatment.

People

Justin Green

Dr Justin Green, PreDiCT-TB co-coordinator, is a clinical trials physician at GSK, based in London. Having spent 15 years in the UK NHS, including being awarded a PhD in TB Immunology from Imperial College London, he received his infectious diseases specialist training certification in 2009. He now works in the Diseases of the Developing World group in a number of teams focusing mainly on TB and malaria collaborating with external bodies such as academic institutions and NGOs.
Gerry Davies

Gerry Davies is the academic co-ordinator of the PreDiCT-TB consortium. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Insititutes of Infection and Global Health and of Translational Medicine at the University of Liverpool. He trained in Infectious Diseases in South Africa, UK and Thailand, obtaining an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Liverpool. His research interests include PK-PD modelling, clinical trials and systematic reviews of TB-HIV treatment. He is currently seconded to the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Research Unit in Blantyre, Malawi.
Annabelle Milla

Trained as a pharmacist, I started in industry in 1998 and worked first as a study monitor and from 1999 as an international study coordinator then project manager in Alzheimer disease, oncology, gene therapy and thrombosis, in operational early clinical development till life cycle management studies handled in Europe, United States and Asia Pacific regions, in small size biotech structure and Sanofi legacy companies.

I am currently member of the Infectious Diseases at sanofi-aventis R&D, mainly in Tuberculosis. I am particularly in charge of alliance and project management for internal R&D projects and partnerships.
Stephen Gillespie

Professor Stephen Gillespie holds the Sir James Black Chair of Medicine at the University of St Andrews Bute Medical School. He has been working in clinical drug development for more than 20 years. Initially describing mathematical models of early and late phase clinical trials. He has published more that 200 papers and chapters on all aspects of microbiology and infectious diseases. He is currently Chief Investigator for the REMoxTB study sponsored by UCL and co-funded by the European Developing Countries’ Clinical Trials Partnership and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, and co-Chief Investigator of the PanACEA consortium for which he has received funding in excess of 15m Euro. He is the principal investigator of an MRC funded biomarker research project in collaboration with University College London, Imperial College London and the University of Kwa Zulu Natal. He also is Director of the MRC funded Tuberculosis Drug Discovery UK consortium a nationwide group of academics and SMEs engaged in drug discovery. Stephen is the academic lead for WP3 and is also involved in WP5.
Ulrika Simonsson

Ulrika Simonsson is Professor in Pharmacometrics at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her expertise is focused on how modelling and simulation of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics can be used to optimize drug development. Her academic research activities have included several different therapeutic areas and a special interest has been multi-drug treatment of malaria/HIV/tuberculosis. In 2004 she received the AstraZeneca’s Young Talented Scientist award and in 2007 AstraZenceca’s Clinical Innovation award. She is the academic workpackage leader for modeling and simulation in the PreDiCT-TB consortium.
Stefan Kaufmann

Stefan H.E. Kaufmann is Professor for Immunology and Microbiology at the Charité University Clinics and member of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. His major interest lies on tuberculosis with particular emphasis on rational design of biomarkers and vaccines. He is recipient of numerous scientific awards and coordinator of several international research projects. He is President of the International Union of Immunological Societies and a strong spokesperson for north-south research activities and public-private partnerships.
Koen Andries

Koen Andries is VP Scientific Fellow at Janssen Infectious Diseases & Vaccines in Beerse, Belgium. His expertise is focused on drug discovery and antimicrobial research in the fields of HRV, HIV (intelence, edurant), RSV and TB (bedaquiline). He led the team that discovered bedaquiline (TMC207, R207910) and its unique mechanism of action and is the microbiology leader of the development team. In the PreDiCT-TB consortium his group is validating one of the mouse models of TB infection.
Marino Zerial

Prof. Marino Zerial, Director of the MPI-CBG, has pioneered systems biology and multidisciplinary approaches to study endocytosis. He conducted a systems biology analysis by genome-wide RNAi screening, using quantitative multi-parametric image analysis (QMPIA) to extract functional information from images and identify regulators of endocytosis (see <a href="http://endosomics.mpi-cbg.de/">Endosomics Web Database</a>). Zerial has long standing experience in collaborative projects with industries and academic institutions and over 10 years of experience in high content and high throughput cell-based image analysis screens. He is also co-founder of JadoLabs, a start-up biotech company devoted to drug development for membrane-based metabolic diseases.
John McKinney

Prof. McKinney holds a PhD degree from The Rockefeller University, United States. He is director of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Microsystems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. The <a href="http://mckinney-lab.epfl.ch/">McKinney Lab's </a> role in PreDiCT-TB is to develop new fluorescent reporters and microfluidic systems for real-time single-cell analysis of the impact of antimicrobial compounds on bacteria by time-lapse microscopy
Yanmin Hu

Dr Yanmin Hu is a Senior Research Fellow in St George’s University of London. The main focus of her research include new drugs for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other important pathogens; improved chemotherapy to eradicate persistent bacteria; molecular approaches to understand the processes of infection and pathogenesis of M. tuberculosis and other pathogens, discovery novel antibiotics against non-multiplying bacteria. She has extensive experiences in microbiology, molecular biology, cell culture and animal experimental models. She is involved in both in vitro and in vivo workpackages in the PreDiCT-TB consortium.
Stewart Cole

Professor Stewart Cole - a world-authority on tuberculosis and leprosy with 25 years' experience, has worked extensively in the areas of mycobacterial drug resistance, genetics, genomics, pathogenesis and drug discovery. A multidisciplinary approach is being used by Professor Stewart Cole’s lab to tackle major public health problems such as tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy. The unit comprises experts in animal models, bioinformatics, biochemistry, chemistry, genomics, functional genomics, and structural biology. Using screening and genome biology as a platform we are actively involved in discovering new drugs to treat TB and, given the global importance of the TB problem, believe that knowledge gained through discovery must be broadly and swiftly disseminated.
Ron Dirks

Dr Ron Dirks is a molecular biologist with a long experience in developing in vivo research models. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands (regulation of cancer genes) and did postdoctoral work on eye development, cellular stress, and vertebrate in vivo model systems (Radboud University Nijmegen and University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA). He joined ZF-screens in 2008 and currently manages projects involved in artificial maturation of aquaculture fish, de novo assembly of vertebrate genomes, and high-throughput drug screening platforms in zebrafish larvae.
Chris Stanley

Dr Christopher Stanley PhD FSB. A biochemistry graduate from University CollegeLondon with a Ph.D. from St. John’s College, Cambridge. Chris has had a career in technology consultancy, life sciences R&D and business management. He was Chief Scientist and Manager of the Biotechnology Group at Scientific Generics (now Sagentia plc) before founding Ivotech Ltd, a technology-focused international consulting firm. He has served in interim management positions on behalf of clients, acting as Chief Technology Officer/Senior Vice President in a number of development stage life sciences companies and consulting firms. Chris has also acted as an advisor to venture fund managers and investment banks in evaluating and valuing technology investments and acquisitions. He is an inventor, or co-inventor of >40 published patents. Chris will be involved in managing the Microsens contribution to the PreDiCT-TB project and will work closely with Dr Stuart Wilson on development of the new TB drug susceptibility detection technologies.
Juan José Vaquero

Juan José Vaquero is Professor of Bioengineering at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He received his PhD in Medical Imaging from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He worked for SIEMENS before moving to the USA as a “Fogarty Fellow” at the National Institutes of Health, where he was involved in the development of new molecular imaging technologies for small animals. After his return to Spain as a “Ramón y Cajal” Fellow he continued his research on PET and mutimodality imaging systems at the Hospital Gregorio Marañón de Madrid. His current research is focused on innovative applications of novel molecular imaging technologies.
Simon Waddell

Simon Waddell is a Lecturer in Molecular Biochemistry at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex located in sunny Brighton. He trained at the University of Birmingham and St Georges University of London before a stint as a postdoctoral scientist at Stanford University. His work focuses on understanding the interactions between host and pathogen throughout the disease process, exploring the transcriptional signatures derived from immune cells and mycobacteria during infection or after drug exposure.

Consortium Partners

PreDiCT-TB brings together twenty-one leading European research partners in tuberculosis from both Industry and Academia

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The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° 115337, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution.

The communication contained within this site reflects the author’s view and neither IMI nor the European Union and EFPIA are liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Who is Involved

People

Justin Green

Gerry Davies

Annabelle Milla

Stephen Gillespie

Ulrika Simonsson

Stefan Kaufmann

Koen Andries

Marino Zerial

John McKinney

Yanmin Hu

Stewart Cole

Ron Dirks

Chris Stanley

Juan José Vaquero

Simon Waddell

Consortium Partners

Project Overview

Resources

Contacting Us

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