Skip to Content
800-533-8762
  • Careers
  • Newsroom
  • Health Care Professionals
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
UPMC
  • Find a Doctor
  • Services
    • Frequently Searched Services
    • Frequently Searched Services
      Allergy & Immunology Behavioral & Mental Health Cancer Ear, Nose & Throat Endocrinology Gastroenterology Heart & Vascular Imaging Neurosciences Orthopaedics
      Physical Rehabilitation Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Primary Care Senior Services Sports Medicine Telemedicine Transplant Surgery Walk-In Care Weight Management Women’s Health
      See all Services
    • Services by Region
    • Find a UPMC health care facility close to you quickly by browsing by region.
      UPMC in Western Pa. Western Pa. and New York
      UPMC in Central Pa. Central Pa.
      UPMC in North Central Pa. North Central Pa.
      UPMC in Western Md. Maryland & West Virginia
    • See All Services
  • Locations
    • Locations by Type
    • Locations by Type
      UPMC hospitals
      Hospitals
      Physical Therapy
      Physical Therapy
      Urgent care
      Walk-In Care
      UPMC Outpatient Centers
      Outpatient Centers
      UPMC Imaging Services
      Imaging
      Community Health Centers
      Community Health Centers
      See All Locations
    • Locations by Region
    • Locations by Region
      UPMC in Southwest Pa. Southwest Pa.
      UPMC in North Central Pa. North Central Pa.
      UPMC in Northwest Pa and Ny. Northwest Pa. & Western N.Y.
      UPMC in West Central Pa. West Central Pa.
      UPMC in Central Pa. Central Pa.
      UPMC in Western Md. Maryland & West Virginia
    • See All Locations
  • Patients & Visitors
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
      Patients and Visitors Resources Pay a Bill Classes & Events Medical Records Health Library Patient Information
      Patient Portals Privacy Information Shared Decision Making Traveling Patients Visitor Information
      Man uses mobile phone
      Pay a Bill
      Nurse reviews medical chart
      Request Medical Records
  • Patient Portals
  • Find Covid-19 updates
  • Schedule an appointment
  • Request medical records
  • Pay a bill
  • Learn about financial assistance
  • Find classes & events
  • Send a patient an eCard
  • Make a donation
  • Volunteer
  • Read HealthBeat blog
  • Explore UPMC Careers
Skip to Content
UPMC
  • Patient Portals
  • For Patients & Visitors
    • Find a Doctor
    • Locations
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
    • Pay a Bill
    • Services
    • More
      • Medical Records
      • Financial Assistance
      • Classes & Events
      • HealthBeat Blog
      • Health Library
  • About UPMC
    • Why UPMC
    • Facts & Stats
    • Supply Chain Management
    • Community Commitment
    • More
      • Financials
      • Support UPMC
      • UPMC Apps
      • UPMC Enterprises
      • UPMC International
  • For Health Care Professionals
    • Physician Information
    • Resources
    • Education & Training
    • Departments
    • Credentialing
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Newsroom
  • UPMC >
  • Media Relations >
  • News Releases >
  • 050119 HIV TB Scanga
Media Relations
News Releases
Central Pa. News
North Central Pa. News
Contact Us
Experts
Community-Focused News
Media Kits
Media RSS
Media Relations
News Releases
Central Pa. News
North Central Pa. News
Contact Us
Experts
Community-Focused News
Media Kits
Media RSS

Chat Keywords List

  • cancel or exit: Stops your conversation
  • start over: Restarts your current scenario
  • help: Shows what this bot can do
  • terms: Shows terms of use and privacy statement
  • feedback: Give us feedback
Continue
Chat with UPMC
RESTART
MENU
CLOSE

International $6M Grant to Study HIV/TB Coinfection in Kids

For Journalists

Erin Hare, Ph.D.
Manager, Science Writing
412-738-1097
HareE@upmc.edu

Allison Hydzik
Director, Science and Research
412-647-9975
hydzikam@upmc.edu

Want to Make an Appointment or Need Patient Information?
Contact UPMC at

1-800-533-8762.

Go to Find a Doctor to search for a UPMC doctor.

2 NEW PITT HS

5/1/2019

PITTSBURGH – About a third of us are walking around with the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB) in our bodies, but most don’t actually end up with TB. For children living with HIV – about 2 million at last estimate – it’s a different story. They’re much more likely to develop TB, and about 40,000 HIV-positive children die from it each year. 

 

To explore exactly how HIV puts children at greater risk of contracting and dying from TB, an international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Hawaii at Mānoa, have secured a five-year, $6.2 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The grant will fund nonhuman primate experiments to understand disease mechanisms and explore a potential therapeutic approach. Then, extending from the laboratory to the field, the researchers will investigate whether the same findings are true for children living in Myanmar, where rates of HIV and TB are both high.   

 

“Kids are not small adults. They have distinct immune responses. You can’t necessarily extrapolate results from adults to kids,” said principal investigator Charles Scanga, Ph.D., research associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics Pitt School of Medicine. “Our first goal is to check whether we see in kids what we have already shown in adults—in a model of kids who may go many months or years without being diagnosed, which is the unfortunate clinical reality in underserved parts of the world.”

 

HIV TB Scanga Grant releaseScanga’s lab is located in Pitt’s Center for Vaccine Research, which is one of the few infectious disease labs in the world equipped with a PET-CT scanner. That imaging technology allows Scanga to observe disease progression in infected animals over time.

 

Scanga uses adolescent monkeys, age 1.5 to 2 years, which is equivalent to age 10 to 14 in humans. He will infect them with SIV – the monkey version of HIV – and, after several weeks, treat them with antiviral drugs like those used to treat people living with HIV. Next, he will expose them to the bacteria that causes TB. 

 

In Scanga’s previous work with adult monkeys, the SIV-positive animals fared much worse than their SIV-negative counterparts, with faster TB progression.

 

The reason, Scanga hypothesizes, is that SIV attacks the natural killer T cells and mucosal-associated invariant T cells in the lungs that would normally act as a first defense against TB. In response, these cells produce more of the protein PD-1, which leads to immune exhaustion and failure to respond to invading bacteria.

 

The next step is to see whether it’s possible to reverse immune exhaustion to fend off TB more effectively. So, Scanga teamed up with Shelby O’Connor, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

They plan to treat SIV-positive monkeys with a cancer immunotherapy drug, a PD-1 blocker, that reverses immune exhaustion so that T cells might better prevent TB bacteria from infiltrating the lungs. 

 

“It’s amazing to me how the interventions for people living with HIV are merging with those used to treat cancer,” O’Connor said. “While the diseases are quite different, there also are many similarities in how an affected person responds to each disease.”  

 

Extending these questions from the laboratory to the field, the researchers initiated a collaboration with Lishomwa Ndhlovu, M.D., Ph.D., professor of tropical medicine in the John A. Burns School of Medicine  at the University of Hawaii. 

 

In collaboration with the Yangon Children’s Hospital, Ndhlovu and his team will look at blood samples from children in Myanmar. The idea is to see whether children living with HIV have the same T cell deficiencies and immune exhaustion markers as the laboratory animals do, and whether those markers correlate with TB coinfection rates. 

 

“Children with HIV are very vulnerable to TB, and anything we can do to try to better understand the pathology of the disease and potentially develop new interventions would make a great dent in the morbidity and mortality of the two diseases,” Ndhlovu said.

 

Other collaborators on the grant include Stephen Kent, Ph.D., at the University of Melbourne Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia, and Kyaw Linn, M.D., at Mingaladon Specialist Hospital in Yangoon, Myanmar.

PHOTO INFO: (click image for high-res version)

 

Caption: Research into the mechanism of HIV and TB coinfection will happen at Pitt's Center for Vaccine Research

 

Credit: University of Pittsburgh

 

 

UPMC
200 Lothrop Street Pittsburgh, PA 15213

412-647-8762 800-533-8762

Patients And Visitors
  • Find a Doctor
  • Locations
  • Pay a Bill
  • Patient & Visitor Resources
  • Disabilities Resource Center
  • Services
  • Medical Records
  • No Surprises Act
  • Price Transparency
  • Financial Assistance
  • Classes & Events
  • Health Library
Health Care Professionals
  • Physician Information
  • Resources
  • Education & Training
  • Departments
  • Credentialing
Newsroom
  • Newsroom Home
  • Inside Life Changing Medicine Blog
  • News Releases
About
  • Why UPMC
  • Facts & Stats
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Community Commitment
  • Financials
  • Supporting UPMC
  • HealthBeat Blog
  • UPMC Apps
  • UPMC Enterprises
  • UPMC Health Plan
  • UPMC International
  • Nondiscrimination Policy
Life changing is...
Follow UPMC
  • Contact Us
  • Website/Email Terms of Use
  • Medical Advice Disclaimer
  • Privacy Information
  • Active Privacy Alerts
  • Sitemap
© 2025 UPMC I Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences Supplemental content provided by Healthwise, Incorporated. To learn more, visit healthwise.org
Find Care
Providers
Video Visit
Portal Login