Clinical Research Award for DZIF and DZL tuberculosis researchers

This year's Award for Clinical Research of the German Society of Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine (DGP) went to a group of three young researchers from two German Centers for Health Research. Maja Reimann and Prof Jan Heyckendorf from the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) and Dr Sebastian Marwitz from the German Center for Lung Research (DZL) developed an algorithm that can indicate with high accuracy the necessary duration of tuberculosis therapy.

The DGP Prize for Clinical Research, endowed with 10,000 euros, is shared by Maja Reimann and Prof Jan Heyckendorf from the DZIF and DZL scientist Dr Sebastian Marwitz for developing a prediction methodology for tuberculosis therapy. Together with a large international team of scientists and physicians coordinated by the Clinical Tuberculosis Center at DZIF, the three researchers were able to make an important contribution to the future of personalised tuberculosis therapy.

Currently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends a standardised duration of tuberculosis treatment of at least 18 months, which is associated with high costs as well as a high risk of side effects. With their work conducted at the Research Center Borstel–Leibniz Lung Center, the researchers sought to answer the question of how to predict the response to therapy and thus its likely necessary duration.

In a large-scale clinical research project, the team was able to identify 22 genes out of many thousands in blood samples from patients that correlate with response to therapies and indicate whether a patient is likely to be cured. The team validated this newly discovered biomarker—the gene signature—in various cohorts consisting of a total of around 200 patients.

Thanks to their findings, which have been presented in the renowned journal European Respiratory Journal, using a simple blood test in the future might allow to predict the response to and the necessary duration of therapy in individual tuberculosis patients.

Source: Press release of the Airway Research Center North (ARCN)