Dr. Bill Jacobs Inter-Lab Meeting Speaker

Join the Division’s Inter-Lab Meeting with Dr. Bill Jacobs, Professor Microbiology & Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in ZSFG, Building 5, Room 505.

Dr. Jacobs will be discussing “Exacting Edward Jenner’s Revenge: Does the Path to Tuberculosis Eradication Pass Through Vitamin C, Herpes, Influenza, and Dengue?” 

Ironically, Edward Jenner, the originator of vaccines, lost his wife and son to Tuberculosis. Although the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis enabled Robert Koch to establish the germ theory of disease in 1882, TB remains the single leading infectious cause of death today. This sad distinction is true even though we have a vaccine and a sterilizing chemotherapy. This talk will focus on the phenomenon of persistence – the capacity of M. tuberculosis to resist sterilization. Novel chemotherapeutic strategies to kill persisters developed from genetic studies of Isoniazid  action will be described. In addition, a novel vaccine strategy that provides sterilizing immunity to Herpes will be described as well as its applications to other diseases including TB.