Intervening along the spectrum of tuberculosis: meeting report from the World TB Day nanosymposium in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the highly infectious Mycobacterium tuberculosis, remains a leading cause of death worldwide, with an estimated 1.6 million associated deaths reported in 2017. In South Africa, an estimated 322,000 (range 230,000-428,000) people were infected with TB in 2017, and a quarter of them lost their lives due to the disease. Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) remains the only effective vaccine against disseminated TB, but its inability to confer complete protection against pulmonary TB in adolescents and adults calls for an urgent need to develop new and better vaccines. There is also a need to identify markers of disease protection and develop novel drugs. It is within this backdrop that we convened a nanosymposium at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town to commemorate World TB Day and showcase recent findings generated by early career scientists in the institute. The speakers spoke on four broad topics: identification of novel drug targets, development of host-directed drug therapies, transmission of TB and immunology of TB/HIV co-infections.