I am a Professor of Immunology in the ITD faculty at LSHTM and Head of the TB research group at the MRC Unit in The Gambia. My PhD and early post-doctoral career were spent in Australia and London respectively with a focus on immunotherapy for cancer; I changed research objectives to infectious disease immunology when I moved to the MRC Unit, The Gambia (MRCG). The TBCC cohort is one of the longest running case-contact cohorts worldwide and provides a unique opportunity for multi- disciplinary research. It is run in close collaboration with the national TB program to promote health systems strengthening and public engagement. Underpinning all our studies is fundamental science to determine mechanisms, risk factors, and biomarkers/correlates of risk for TB infection and disease. Current research projects in my laboratory include elucidating the risk factors for long-term lung pathology in TB; defining the role of non-classical T cells, B cells and antibodies in the early response to Mtb infection; defining correlates of risk for progression to active TB; understanding immunity at the site of infection; immunity to TB in the context of HIV and other co-infections (including Influenza) and development of rapid diagnostic tests for TB.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
Since joining LSHTM, I have increased my teaching work including supervision of MSc students, tutoring for IDM213, lecturing for MSc IID and ad hoc teaching locally. I have supervised several summer LSHTM MSc students, all of whom had publications from their projects. I have been a module tutor for IDM213 distance learning since December 2019 including marking of assignments and exams, writing exam questions, updating the study guide and providing on-line lecturing. Prior to joining LSHTM, I lectured for several immunology workshops in The Gambia and have provided ad hoc training on flow cytometry and immunology for students and staff for over 15 years. I have also been involved in training and workshops for our clinical staff and local healthcare workers. I have supervised 22 BSc students (12 from Manchester and 10 from Gambia), 11 MSc and 6 PhD students.
Research
Since joining the MRC Unit in 2006, my research has focused on immunity to tuberculosis, with a particular emphasis on discovery and validation of biomarkers for prognosis, diagnosis, and treatment response. The BMGF-funded TB biomarker study has generated multiple publications including the key publication in AJRCCM for which I was second author (Suliman et al., 2018); The Lancet (Zak et al., 2016), Plos Medicine (Penn-Nicholson et al, 2020) and Nature communications (Weiner et al., 2019). More recently I have focused on analysis of early protective immunity to Mtb (Weiner et al., CID, 2020; Sutherland JS, senior author), treatment response biomarkers (LSHTM MSc project 2019; Vickers et al., 2020; Sutherland JS, senior author) and Neutrophils in TB lung pathology (PhD student, Muefong et al., 2020 and 2021; Sutherland JS, senior author). Current research projects in my laboratory include elucidating the risk factors for long-term lung pathology in TB; defining the role of non-classical T cells, B cells and antibodies in the early response to Mtb infection; defining correlates of risk for progression to active TB; understanding immunity at the site of infection; immunity to TB in the context of HIV and other co-infections (including Influenza) and development of rapid diagnostic tests for TB.
Selected Publications
