CID Annual Symposium 2023: Invited Speakers

Session 1: AMR – new approaches (9.10 - 10.10) – Chair: Prof Andres Floto

Machine learning algorithms to optimally prescribe antibiotics

Keynote talk: Prof Roy Kishony (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)

Antibiotic resistance is growing as a major public health concern. Predicting antibiotic resistance and the evolutionary paths leading to resistance is key to our ability to control the spread of drug-resistant pathogens. I will describe a series of experimental-computational methodologies for following and identifying recurrent patterns in the evolution of antibiotic resistance in the lab and in the clinic. Combined with machine-learning approaches applied to electronic patient records, these tools lead to predictive diagnostics of antibiotic resistance and algorithms for personalized treatments of microbial infections.

Structural cell biology of bacterial biofilm formation

Dr Tanmay Bharat (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology)

Most prokaryotes including bacteria and archaea form macroscopic, surface-attached, multi-cellular communities known as biofilms. Biofilms constitute the majority of bacterial biomass on earth, representing a fundamental mode of prokaryotic existence. While biofilms may prove beneficial to eukaryotes as host-associated microbiomes, the formation of pathogenic bacterial biofilms is associated with the establishment of serious chronic antibiotic-tolerant infections. We use electron tomography, coupled with a variety of structural and cell biology methods to study how molecules on the surface of bacterial cells mediate bacterial biofilm formation. Correlated light and electron microscopy (CLEM) and mass spectrometry (MS) are used to support our investigations. We combine in vitro reconstitution of key molecules with in vivo imaging to understand how pathogenic bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa form biofilms. We utilise mechanistic insights from our work to develop strategies for therapeutic intervention against bacterial infections.

Connecting Synthetic Chemistry and Clinically Relevant Microbiology

Professor Christopher Schofield (University of Oxford)

The lecture will describe studies aimed at developing new ways to combat resistance to the beta-lactam antibiotics, which despite >70 years of use remain amongst the most important drugs in use. It will make the case for increased resources for antibacterial research and development, in particular in efforts to connect challenging synthetic chemistry with clinically relevant microbiology.

Session 2: Safer Environments (11.10 - 12.10) – Chair: Prof Andy Woods

Built environment design for the double trouble - Heat and infectious disease

Dr Ronita Bardhan (Department of Architecture)

Three things that are happening simultaneously are – global shift in work culture, making residences are primary space for productivity, rise of infectious disease, and heats stress as a consequences of climate change. This means future population will be spending more time indoors in heat stressed environment prone to disease spread. Given that future urbanization lies in the resource constrained communities of Global South, this talk will elaborate how affordable housing can respond to heat resilience and reducing the burden of disease. Using three case studies from low-income houses of India, Ethiopia and Kenya, this talk will demonstrate the role of built environment design as a public health and a climate action.  

Infection Resilient Environments

Prof Shaun Fitzgerald (Department of Engineering)

The talk will start with an introduction to the work of the Royal Academy of Engineering in seeking to help identify how we might improve the infection resilience of our buildings. It will then explore the possible modes of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and a review of the potential non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) which could be used to try and intersect the transmission pathways. Finally, we will look at the longer range transmission via airborne particles and describe a method which can be used to help assess the relative risks for different environments.

Zoonotic urbanization: multispecies urbanism and the rescaling of urban epidemiology

Prof Matthew Gandy (Department of Geography)

A focus on zoonotic urbanization challenges existing conceptions of global urbanism.  In this presentation I consider how a modified urban political ecology framework might help to illuminate emerging landscapes of epidemiological risk.  I show how a multi-scalar perspective on urban epidemiology, including the impact of colonialism, global capitalism, and changing relations with non-human others, unsettles existing analytical approaches.  I contrast resilience-oriented public health paradigms, focused on the malleability of nature, with a historically grounded set of insights into global environmental change.  I suggest that the conceptual field of zoonotic urbanization provides an analytical entry point for understanding an emergent “triple crisis” spanning climate change, biodiversity loss, and global health threats. 

Session 3: Vaccinology (13.40 - 14.40) – Chair: Dr Charlotte Houldcroft

Innovative finance for global health? Vaccine bonds and the hidden costs of financialisation

Dr Sarah Hughes-McLure (Department of Geography; currently ICRC Switzerland)

‘Innovative’ finance is now considered essential to mobilise the trillions projected as required to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm), which issues vaccine bonds, is an emblematic example of ‘innovative’ finance in global health and development. IFFIm has played a leading role in developing social bonds and funding global health, securing over $8 billion in donor commitments, and disbursing over $3 billion to date to Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, since its launch in 2006. Adopting a ‘follow the money’ approach, I set out a significant, evidence-based challenge to some of the dominant claims around innovative development finance and global health more widely, and IFFIm in particular. I find evidence of non-trivial private profit-making, hiding in plain sight, at the expense of beneficiaries and donors. Through advanced critical financial analysis, I reveal precisely who benefits and by how much. Furthermore, my analysis shows in detail how financialization reduces political control over aid, and the uneven spatial distribution of material rewards and political power. While IFFIm delivers on its claim to front-load aid commitments and makes a significant contribution to global health, the talk asks whether the economic and political costs of ‘innovative’ financing mechanisms are worth it. I finish by showing that alternative models for vaccine finance are possible.

Understanding Immune responses following infection and vaccination

Prof Henrik Salje (Department of Genetics)

Vaccines are rarely developed with a good understanding of the immune responses they trigger, the comparability of these responses to natural infection and whether there exist immune-based correlates of protection. Using examples from dengue and chikungunya, I will discuss how we can use mathematical models to help these important knowledge gaps.

The role of vaccines in Defeating Meningitis by 2030

Prof Caroline Trotter (Department of Pathology)

TBC

Session 4: Infectious Diseases and Climate Change (15.50 - 17.10) – Chair: Prof Julia Gog

Poop-omics! Unravelling the secrets hidden in bird faeces.

Dr Anna Protasio (Department of Pathology)

TBC

Airs, waters and agues: the historical impact of malaria in the Cambridgeshire Fens

Dr Romola Davenport (Department of Geography)

Malaria is argued to have been a major cause of high mortality in low-lying coastal areas of northern Europe before c.1800. Climate change is expected to increase the risk of malaria in temperate areas, prompting renewed interest in the history of endemic malaria in Britain and the reasons for its apparent disappearance in the nineteenth century. By far the largest area of historical wetland in Britain is the Fens region of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, however the only case study of historical malaria in Britain deals with the much smaller marshes of south-eastern England (Kent, Essex and Sussex) (Dobson, 1997). Here we report preliminary results from a project designed to test whether malaria contributed to excessive mortality in the Cambridgeshire Fens (c.1550 – 1840), and whether seventeenth-century and later drainage programs had any impact on these patterns.