New Emory TB Research Center to Help Draw Attention

to an Old but Still Deadly Disease

A century ago, tuberculosis was the equivalent of COVID-19 today: a respiratory disease that was everywhere, killing men and women across all strata of society. Once the world discovered an effective antibiotic treatment for TB, it became mostly relegated to the margins. And yet, until the arrival of SARS-CoV-2, more people died of TB every year than any other infectious disease, especially in poorer countries.

A new grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will support scientists at Emory and three other institutions in the US to further research TB, which in 2020 killed approximately 1.5 million individuals and was responsible for an estimated 10 million new cases world wide.

The goal of the Emory/Georgia Tuberculosis Research Advancement Center (Emory/Georgia-TRAC) will be to expand collaborative multidisciplinary TB research in the US and internationally; diversify TB research in new directions; and identify, train, and mentor the next generation of TB researchers and scientific leaders.

Emory/Georgia-TRAC will include colleagues from the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Morehouse School of Medicine and Georgia Tech. It will also work closely with public health professionals in the Fulton and Dekalb county health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Principal investigators Neel Gandhi, professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, and Jyothi Rengarajan, professor of medicine at Emory Vaccine Center and the School of Medicine, say the initiative will harness Emory’s deep infectious diseases expertise and tap into the complementary strengths of other institutions in the state.

Like COVID-19, TB disproportionately affects those in underresourced settings—people who live in poverty, have little access to health care, sanitary facilities, and education, and are malnourished.

“If there’s one thing we have learned from the pandemic, it’s that a dangerous infectious disease anywhere is a dangerous infectious disease everywhere,” says Gandhi.

“The impact of a respiratory pathogen such as TB being present in the world is a big reason to ensure we find ways to end this disease.” EHD