Tuberculosis: Heterogeneity from Experimental Models to Human Disease

ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Tuberculosis: Heterogeneity from Experimental Models to Human Disease, organized by Drs. JoAnne L. Flynn, Bryan D. Bryson and Henry C. Mwandumba. The meeting will take place February 16–19, 2025 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, MA. Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s leading cause of infectious disease death, but despite decades of research, there remains an incomplete understanding of the immune responses necessary for protection against the disease. The heterogeneity that exists across many aspects of the disease—from mycobacterial physiology to cellular responses to Mtb infection, to human responses to infection and vaccination—remains an incompletely characterized aspect of TB. The goal of this meeting is to bring together scientists from across the globe to dissect pathogen and host heterogeneity across molecular and clinical aspects of the disease. The program will also analyze heterogeneity in tissue-level response to infection, as well as human and non-human primate responses to vaccination. A central theme of the meeting will be highlighting molecular, clinical, and technological advances that enable better characterization of the variable elements that have the strongest impact on disease outcomes. By bringing together diverse scientists from across the spectrum of TB research, this meeting will foster new collaborations to integrate human observations with experimental models, immunologic insights and molecular profiling, to generate new therapeutic paradigms that are so desperately needed against this disease.