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There is all too little public awareness of tuberculosis (TB) in the world’s richest country. In fact, many believe TB to be a thing of the past. However, this is far from the case. Around a quarter of the world’s population is infected with TB, and with 1.5 million deaths a year, this disease is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide.

Ingrid Wiggers wants to do something about this.

Although there has been an effective cure for TB since the 1950s, it has not led to eradication of the disease. The treatment is prolonged, complicated and associated with significant adverse effects. What’s more, the number of multiresistant TB strains – strains resistant to the most effective medicines – is on the increase, and this complicates treatment further. Development of simpler, less toxic treatment regimes, effective against resistant strains, may be an important step on the road to eradication of TB. It is therefore a long-term goal for Ingrid Wiggers and the research group to identify a new therapy for TB that draws on our natural immune system.

‘TB remains overlooked and underfunded. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that efficient, international collaboration and suitable political commitment can foster extraordinary scientific achievements. It’s about time we demonstrate the same level of ambition when it comes to combating other diseases that kill millions of people, albeit in parts of the world far from our own,’ Wiggers says.

Together with leading experts at the Ernst Lab at UCSF, she will study the immune mechanisms that successfully keep infection with TB bacteria at bay. To do this, the research group will compare the immune response to two bacteria, both of which cause TB: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which is the most common cause of TB worldwide, and Mycobacterium africanum (Maf), which causes up to 50% of the cases of TB in West Africa. Studies of TB patients have shown that those infected with Maf develop active disease – that is, TB symptoms – slower than patients infected with Mtb. In other words, it seems as though the immune system is more successful at keeping Maf infections under control than Mtb infections.

‘If we understand why this is so, we may be able to identify new options for tackling TB, for instance by strengthening our natural defence mechanisms,’ Wiggers explains.
 

Ingrid Wiggers’ Danish mentor on the project is Christian Wejse, consultant at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Aarhus University, and associate professor at the Centre for Global Health. He has been working with TB patients and conducted research on TB in West Africa since 2003. Joel Ernst, professor and head of the Division of Experimental Medicine at UCSF, is Ingrid Wiggers’ US mentor at the Ernst Lab where research focuses on immune response to TB.

‘DARE is a unique opportunity for me to combine research and an exchange programme with entrepreneurship. I hope that DARE will provide a stepping stone to a future research career and mark the beginning of a long-term research partnership,’ Wiggers says.

Ingrid Wiggers recently completed the eighth semester of her medical studies at Aarhus University and has a strong interest in infection medicine and global health. She is one of five Danish medical students who have travelled to the USA with the Lundbeck Foundation's DARE (Danish American Research Exchange) programme. Wiggers will spend the year on her studies and on research at University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) – one of the world’s most prestigious universities