Research areas: Diagnostics, Drug resistance, Infectious disease, Molecular epidemiology, Tuberculosis.
Other keywords: MDR TB.
Background
Ruth McNerney joined the School in 1990 and is currently part of TARGETS, a DFID funded Research Consortium on Communicable Diseases, Risk and Poverty.
Her research includes the development, adaptation and evaluation of tools for the control of tuberculosis. This includes diagnosis, detection of drug resistance and molecular epidemiology. She is experienced in molecular techniques, immunoassay, and has recently developed a simple, rapid, low-cost test for drug susceptibility using bacteriophages. She has a strong interest in POC tests and current activities include the application of artifical nose technology to the diagnosis of tuberculosis. She is a member of the STOP TB Working Group on New Diagnostics.
Teaching
Ruth is the Organisor for the Tuberculosis Module of the distance learning MSc program. She also teaches and tutors students for the 'in-house' MSc courses, including Medical Microbiology, Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases and Control of Infectious Diseases.
Research
Research activities include the development and evaluation of tests for diagnosis of tuberculosis and the detection of drug resistance. The laboratory also undertakes molecular typing (fingerprinting) including RFLP, spoligotyping and VNTR/MIRU.
Current projects include
VOC analysis for diagnosis of tuberculosis.
Evaluation of a novel antigen for detection of TB.
The rapid and selective detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by field deployable thermochemolysis-gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry. A collaboration with the Open University and colleagues in Zimbabwe and Malawi.
