During a panel discussion of the United Nations High-level Meeting on TB held in New York City on 22 September 2023, Professor Mark Hatherill, the director at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) based at the University of Cape Town (UCT), called for a quantum jump in TB vaccine research and development (R&D) funding, to deliver the transformative tools needed to end the TB pandemic.

The University of Cape Town’s Lung Institute is conducting a new trial involving BTZ-043 (benzothiazinone DprE1 blocker), a novel TB drug candidate. There are also plans to test BTZ-043 in combination with two other new TB drug candidates. If all goes well, the new drug regimen could reduce TB treatment from the current six months to four.

Low Vitamin D levels have been hypothesised by some experts to be a risk factor for tuberculosis (TB). People who develop TB often present with low Vitamin D levels when they are diagnosed. However, whether Vitamin D levels at one point predispose a child to developing TB is debated and not clear.

Results published recently in The Lancet Microbe detail analysis of 10 years’ health data, showing a relationship between HIV infection and acquisition of rifampicin resistance by tuberculosis (TB). Rifampicin is an important first‑line anti‑TB medication.

A study led by the University of Cape Town has provided new information on the relationship between SARS-CoV-2–specific CD4 response to COVID-19 severity and impact of HIV and TB co-infection.

The Lancet Global Health journal reports the findings of a study of a host blood test that can find those at high risk of tuberculosis in people living with HIV. The blood mRNA biomarker differentiated between people living with HIV who had active tuberculosis from those without TB, and predicted which individuals would develop TB within 15 months.

A research program, launched by the Wellcome Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in Africa (CIDRI-Africa) at the University of Cape Town, will investigate the interaction between the COVID-19 pandemic and common endemic infectious diseases in the South African context - HIV and TB.

Researchers from the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research – Seattle in the United States, and a large consortium of collaborators have developed a validated a new, simple blood-based test that has the potential to serve multiple functions in the fight against TB.

Meeting the challenge of drug-resistant tuberculosis: A three-day course on MDR/XDR/XXDR-TB, 2-4 December 2016, Cape Town, South Africa

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded a grant of £3.5m to researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and University of Cape Town (UCT) to carry out a trial to determine whether a weekly vitamin D supplement can prevent tuberculosis (TB) in South African primary school children.